So there’s been another spate of journalists complaining about academics lately, which is a cyclical exercise. This time, they’re really working the  angle where they claim to show respect to academics in the abstract, but use this ostensible respect as a way to heap more disrespect onto actual academics. The latest flavor: how come academics use those big words? Why aren’t academics working harder to explain their work to journalists? Why aren’t academics just like journalists? Inquiring minds want to know. So under the guise of trying to get more engagement from academics, you get Nick Kristof yearning for imaginary academics by deriding actual academics, Josh Marshall dredging up his grad school stories from decades ago to complain about actual academics, and so on. I think Corey Robin did a good job of replying to Kristof, but really, I think the questions essentially answer themselves: they’re expressed with so much derision, it’s no wonder that many academics retreat from contact with journalists. Why put up with the abuse? The Dish’s headline for their post aggregating this stuff was “Can the Ivory Tower Be Stormed?” Sounds like an invitation for a mutually respectful interchange to me!

Now it happens that I think tons of academics are in fact fantastic communicators and great writers. I thought about mentioning some here, but then I realized the pointlessness of that sort of exercise: that academic writing is deliberately obscure and incomprehensible is one of those things that journalists just know, so they don’t feel a need to mention any actual, contemporary academic writers who are willfully obscure. This whole extended conversation has featured a really bizarre lack of specificity and evidence. Which academics are deliberately obscure? How so? In what articles or books? One of the frustrating things about the way the academy is discussed in the media is the existence of things that “everybody knows” that aren’t ever really ascribed to individual people, making these points essentially irrefutable. That college professors hate to teach undergraduates is the most common and the most toxic. In my experience, the average college professor loves to teach and is deeply committed to his or her undergrads. But when there’s no evidence cited, there’s no possibility for rebuttal. Same with the charge of deliberate obscurity: nobody bothers to cite anybody, with the possible exception of some postmodernists who have been out of fashion for 20 years, so there’s no way to push back against the claim.

I also think that what frequently gets derided by journalists as jargon or obscurity are necessary specialized vocabularies that have been developed to reflect the incredibly complexity of our world. I read some of these pieces yesterday in the computer lab at the Oral English Proficiency Program where I work. As I did so, some colleagues of mine were analyzing the waveform of one of their research subjects. They had to utilize a complex and specialized vocabulary to meaningfully address the issues of phonetics, phonology, audiology, syntax, and psycholinguistics that was necessary for their particular task. If they felt that they had to have the conversation in a plain style, it would have been far less efficient and far less precise. Of course, we should be able and willing to discuss  complex ideas in simpler terms and be ready to engage the public with our work. But we also, in our journals and at our conferences, have to be able to utilize a vocabulary of sufficient complexity to effectively and efficiently communicate intricate ideas.

If journalists actually want to know why there’s not a better interface between academics and the media, they should start by engaging in self criticism, which would be the best way to create positive change. They would recognize that many within our media have enthusiastically embraced the anti-intellectual, anti-academic aspects of contemporary American culture. They would admit that academics rarely reach out to journalists because journalists are, as a class, frequently hostile to academics. They would consider how much resentment there is on the part of the media over the tendency of academics to privilege slow, careful knowledge-making over the immediacy and lack of corroboration that are the habits of journalists. They would admit that many journalists jealously guard their role as creators of knowledge, and don’t like sharing that task with academics. And they could ask if perhaps the routine trumpeting of the supposed uselessness of academics is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the reflexive tendency of the media to see academics as irrelevant actually contributes to the problem. Instead of writing thousands of words about how academics are failing journalists, maybe journalists could spend five minutes considering how they’ve failed academics.

In my tiny, low-traffic way here, I’m trying to present some academic ideas for a popular audience, at least some of the time. I have a couple pieces in progress for here that do just that. But if you start from the assumption that I’m an irrelevant figure as a grad student and academic, then there’s no possibility that you’ll ever learn from what I write. Maybe it’s time for the other half of this relationship to engage in a little accountability.