The career of the modern academic, certainly in the UK, is defined largely by whether or not one's research is generating 'impact'. They never asked this of Einstein, Descartes, Derrida or Darwin. People were simpler in those days, and had faith that good and important work would necessarily have an impact in the end. Now we are supposed to be cleverer, and think we can identify 'impact' in advance and measure its effects.
It does raise the question of what it really means to have an impact on the world. Speaking as an academic - and purely in a personal capacity of course, lest in a truly bizarre turn of events anybody of importance at my workplace should be reading this - I often think we would all be a lot better off if academics had considerably less influence than they currently do. We suffer from a serious case of elite overproduction, and see the effects of that everywhere.
We also suffer from a paucity of understanding about what 'impact' really means. Who had the most impact on the world: Martin Heidegger or JRR Tolkien? How could you possibly measure the one against the other? But more importantly, how does one measure the impact of philosophy versus literature, physics versus history, biology versus maths?
I increasingly take the view that we woefully underestimate and misunderstand the impact of art and literature, and that if one really wants to change the world, one should probably recalibrate one's focus from writing op-eds for the New York Times, running for political office or trying to do 'impactful research', and towards creating sublime and wonderful things that will elevate people's souls. Beethoven wasn't an activist and he certainly didn't worry about making an immediate political impact; he made, and continues to make, people's lives better through transcendent beauty - whatever their own personal views or backgrounds. And the world is better that he was there than it would have been if he had not.
We don't all have to be Beethoven, but we can all make the best use of our time. At the more mundane level: is it more 'impactful' to, for instance, retweet some political 'take' you agree with or post a comment on a newspaper article, or to run a great sessions of D&D with your friends and all go home with smiles on your faces afterwards? OK, so you didn't write the Appassionata. But the world is just that little bit better all the same.
This post is a great truth.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteIn terms of the sciences, at least, I think the issue with academia has more to do with the need to produce "successful" work, regardless of its real-world impact. As I understand it, you get grants by coming up with projects that are more likely to generate a signal, which leads to less risk-taking and almost undermines the point of research. Why bother undertaking research when you are fairly sure of the outcome already? Because that what will get you the next grant.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of retweeting etc with the intention of making an impact, I think there is an additional danger of actively doing harm. If you see "impact" as the goal, rather than a side effect of doing good, you will compromise your principles in order to make a splash. We see this every day with both politicians and journalists taking extreme/click-baiting positions.
Around the table, it's the difference between a player/DM doing something dramatic for the sake of the drama, and them acting with verisimilitude. With no exceptions, the most truly impactful gaming moments I remember are those that emerged natural from the flow of the game, rather than someone imposing impact on the game.
Yes, these are some of the most important critiques of the 'audit society'. Michael Power's stuff on this is absolutely seminal. Now there's somebody who made an impact, at least on me.
DeleteThanks for the recommendation. I'll see if I can get hold of a copy.
DeleteMan, the Audit Society stuff is what I've been bugging on for years, it's the damned HR department mediocrities sitting on the nexus of money, insurance, and compliance, in a job too boring for people to want to mess with it, so they just gather power almost automatically and accidentally.
DeleteAs a fellow professor, I can relate. My impact are those students whose life are improved, even if it's very slightly, by my influence. Not the papers I publish.
ReplyDeleteI increasingly feel this.
DeleteI don't disagree with you, but creatives have to eat also. Some creatives even need to chip in with rent and/or put food in their kids' mouths. Feed the soul or feed the body.
ReplyDeleteThat's the main struggle...and I'd imagine it's a similar struggle for academics as well. Feed the mind or feed the body.
Most likely we will just have to catch-as-catch-can with the handful of Beethovens that occasionally appear. But I hope not.
There are only a handful of Beethovens but there are lots of people who can make things that make other people happy to be alive in much less capital 'I' Important ways. Making things for the people you love, for instance.
DeleteI'm not sure "feed the soul or feed the body" isn't a false dichotomy. Shakespeare was writing to put butts in seats (and feet in the groundling yard), and yet he often reached the sublime.
DeleteI think the point JB was making was that sometimes you have to 'render unto Caesar' and do what your job requires you to do. For some people feeding the soul and body can align (whether Shakespeare or Stephen King). Most can't. You have to find time for both, and both will compete against each other.
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ReplyDeleteAs a fellow academic, but in the USA, I have the impression that my UK colleagues are more closely scrutinized for "impact," what with the old RAEs and now the REF. We here absolutely insist upon quality, too, but quality is assessed by selected peer experts (at arms length, not friends) rather than an overwhelmed committee. Not that our way is better: less committee oversight on research certainly has its own risks.
ReplyDeleteWhen we evaluate for tenure at research universities, impact can be a factor, but we assume that impact follows from breakthroughs in research and understanding, so we focus on those. It does vary by institution.
About elite overproduction, if you mean too much graduate education, I disagree. It's a good thing to have highly educated people in any population. If you refer to half-baked and repetitive publications used to pad a resume and give the impression of productivity and impact, I fully agree.
From what I've heard from colleagues with experience on both sides of the pond, US universities do provide a more rigorous all-round education to students stil. A lot of UK universities (the Russell Group) are in this weird space between two stools in which they kind of ape the Oxbridge model (specialising in a major from day one and studying it intensively) but don't do the things that work at Oxbridge (very small group tutorials, and requiring the students to do lots of reading). So it ends up just being a bit shit.
DeleteI disagree on elite overproduction. I don't disagree that learning is good for its own sake. I'm not convinced that formal education is really about that. And I'm very concerned that we have a lot of people graduating with degrees but not having jobs that require them, and thereby getting frustrated and cynical (and heavily indebted - a huge drain on the economy).
I think one can guarantee that ‘Impact’ bears about as much relationship to ‘impact’ as my iTunes playlist does to the compositions of Beethoven. It is a system devised by frustrated Gramscians to crush the human spirit.
ReplyDeleteSJB
It's one of those issues about which both right and left have valid critiques. We have a pseudo-commercial system which manages to combine the worst of both public and private sectors - corporatism, essentially.
DeleteIndeed - this became apparent to me within a few years of joining UK academia. As compared to the US, we are treated more like civil servants than entrepreneurs. Although increasingly there is the nasty implication that you must succeed at marketing yourself and your subject, just to survive - forget any of the financial benefits that accrue in a truly entrepreneurial system.
DeleteTotally agree, though I'm duty bound to let the world know of my unquenchable hatred for math with an "s" on the end. ;)
ReplyDelete'we woefully underestimate and misunderstand the impact of art and literature, and that if one really wants to change the world, one should probably recalibrate one's focus from writing op-eds for the New York Times, running for political office or trying to do 'impactful research', and towards creating sublime and wonderful things that will elevate people's souls.'
ReplyDeleteSic et non, is my first impulse. It may just be my peculiar habit of reading and viewing, but one does encounter an awful lot of stuff talking about the importance of this show*, that book, this music, the exciting news about that series - far more literal and figurative column inches than crop yields and provincial government and road repair schemes.
(Am I more interested by those things? No. Do I think that they are more important, that I would be better served by having weekly updates on them than on rumours of a new Star Wars project? Yes.)
But this is, I suppose, a complaint on how we talk about art and literature and the capital-M Media rather than a full assessment of their impact. Perhaps the elite overproduction you mention above is to blame: an (almost certainly outdated) impulse saying 'Any fool can read David Copperfield, you really have to be someone to talk about it on the air'.
Obviously, I can't blame people for wanting to discuss things or hear discussions (especially in the process of commenting here, or having the audacity to make posts of my own). Still, there's no point coming to the seminar if you haven't done the reading. And I would certainly say that the first step in really making an impact is to tell as few people as possible that this is what you plan to do.
*This aside from the numerous cases of 'Storytellers make the world!' subtext (or outright text) of some fiction.
As a fellow academic, I think that all of this follows from abandoning the goal to produce an educated citizenry, and elevating the goal to produce a trained workforce. Then there's another level of degeneracy already on view in many institutions, to produce satisfied student consumers of education.
ReplyDeleteIt's inevitable that the model of research follows the model of education. At least, in research, we are still only being judged by the "utility" standard rather than the "popularity" standard (which I suppose would favour TV pundits and collusion to produce flashy newspaper articles).
Rubbish. If you haven't educated your citizens by age 18, you have failed. The next three or four years will make no difference. Teach them plumbing.
DeleteI don't think there's anything wrong wiith trying to produce a trained workforce - in fact I think that's a very laudable goal. That's not what expanding the number of students going to university has done, though. In fact they are less workforce-prepared than they ever were before. The difference is they're not well educated either.
DeleteDuring my college years, I remember being appalled when we were taught to justify the social benefit of our research. It was at that moment that I realized that there is an inextricable element of marketing, bullshitting and politics even in the sciences. Judging by the replicability crisis, that element has only increased as time went on, inevitably so.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, yes. On the other - a bit of a mess, mixing together very different things. Science metrics is... well, sh*t regardless. But that's not because of " too much impact of academics", which is not true. Overproduction of elites is true, but it's different from overproduction of academics, which is also true, but academics were not elites for a very long time now. From 70s at least. Etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd, honestly, I 'd prefer to live in the world where Heidegger and Tolkien had much less impact - e.g., that goodies vs baddies worldview you decried earlier is one of effects of Tolkien's status as a classic . And if we need some of fascist phylosophers to influence our thinking, I'd prefer Genon to Heidegger. ;Pp
Mike
As a professor myself, I can definitely relate. During the pandemic lockdowns, I did some soul searching, and after some career counseling at my university, came to the conclusion that the whole research game (grant writing, publishing papers, ...) is not what I want to spend the last 10 years of my career in. I decided I want to spend the time I have left professionally almost purely to teaching and mentoring students. I feel that's the best way for me to contribute to my department and the academic programs I'm involved in.
ReplyDeleteNow, being in the last quarter of my career, I can afford to make such a decision. I do realize not everyone is in that same position.
That's a nice story. Sadly teaching and mentoring students is way down the list of most universities' priorities, at least where I am located.
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