One of the principle concepts in the field of cell biology is mitosis.
This natural process occurs when a cell or organism splits into two.
A similar situation happens in many learned societies (e.g., American Sociological Association, American Political Science Association, etc.).
Over time, as knowledge accumulates and new people study a phenomenon, they may feel that their interests would be better served if they joined or formed a brand new unit of a learned society under the auspices of the parent organization.
Along with likeminded members, they may start by holding their own panels, and progress to constructing a website, producing a newsletter or journal, and holding their own social. Down the road, they may even split away from the host organization.
Creating and managing a subdivision, especially if it’s done in a professional manner, can be a lot of time consuming work for individuals and groups considering this option. Nevertheless divisions in major learned organizations provide numerous benefits both for the parent organization and for individual members.
For the large learned organization, it is a way to devolve some the responsibilities for communicating, educating, and socializing members into the wider learned society and professional culture of the profession.
Just like extracurricular groups in high school and universities, subdivisions of learned organizations often:
• Minimize alienation felt by new and existing members of the larger organization. People who are new to the learned society may find a subdivision to be an easier point of access to the larger learned society. They may find others similar to themselves much quicker, than by bouncing around the larger learned society.
• Enable members to gain valuable leadership and management experience in a low risk environment. Most subdivisions have lots of openings for positions that few members want to do (e.g., treasurer, secretary, etc.). Much of the experienced gained in working in these positions are transferable to academic positions like chairs of departments, assistant deans etc.
• Assist in the development of members and the profession.
• Facilitate another opportunity for the mentoring of graduate students and junior faculty
• Allows additional publication opportunities (i.e., outlets) to members, especially junior ones, like graduate students.
• Experiment with new forms of member engagement that might be more challenging for the parent organization to accomplish. In this case smaller typically means nimbler.
Divisions are not perfect, but their benefits usually outweigh any negative arguments against their establishment. And when a division of a learned organization outlives its utility, they will eventually be shut down.
Photo
Painting “Hip, Hip, Hurrah! Artists’ Party in Skagen” (1888),
by Peder Severin Krøyer,
in Gothenberg’s Museum of Art.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2021-11-18-at-3.19.55-PM.png421499Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-11-18 21:28:572021-11-18 21:29:39Three cheers for divisions in learned societies
This past week, in a small corner of the twitterverse, a mild storm erupted. This squall centered on a reply written by a junior African American faculty member. The academic, who works at a top ten private university, expressed displeasure with being asked to give a face-to-face lecture at another university, (not in a conference venue), in his area of expertise, and not be paid an honorarium as compensation or recognition for his time and effort.
Judging by the numerous responses and some of the tangents that posters engaged in, regardless of the scholarly discipline, the issue about giving uncompensated papers, speeches or talks at an external venue was bounded by six main arguments. Although not the result of a rigorous content analysis, here is what I believe were the principal arguments of the posters:
Delivering speeches without the expectation of honoraria takes place in lots of fields beyond academia
Some people said that giving talks for free to external audiences is not unique to academia and happens in both the nonprofit and corporate world. The implication here is academics should not feel singled out.
Giving free talks to external audiences is what scholars do
Other replies argued that our profession, regardless of payment, or how much or how little we are paid, requires and enables us to do this sort of free labor. Thus, we should not expect to be compensated for giving uncompensated talks to external audience. By extension the dissemination of our ideas should take primacy over economic compensation.
Giving papers to external audiences increases our prestige and network, thus getting an honorarium should be a secondary consideration
Some of the responders indicated that giving speeches (without remuneration) is an excellent opportunity to showcase our work, disseminate our ideas, possibly help us to improve our reputation (thus value) both at our university and beyond, part of the activism they engage in, and refusing to give a paper primarily because an external venue refuses to pay an honorarium is counterproductive to your career.
Some institutions don’t have money in their budgets to give speakers an honorarium
Another argument was that some institutions where you might give a talk may not have the budget to pay honorariums to external speakers. Although this may be true, with some colleges and universities, the labor involved in setting up and receiving an honorarium, regardless of how paltry it may be, is often a nightmare of epic proportions. It requires those extending the invitation to coordinate with “the right people” in the organization, to give them the correct form/s to fill out, the correct way etc. In the end the inviter, may not want to go through the hassle, and just tells the speaker that there is no honorarium.
People of Color (POC) are exploited by academic institutions and lack of honorariums hits POC more than it does white scholars
Another frequent reply suggested that minority faculty are often asked by their departments, colleges, and universities to do more uncompensated service than their white colleagues. This exploitation exists in some part because POC academics are asked to serve on or chair “diversity” committees, searches, and participate on university panels that bring attention to “racial disparities” in some shape or form, etc. The logical extension of this argument was that POC academics are disproportionately asked to give papers at external institutions in which their efforts are uncompensated (i.e., no honorarium) than their white counterparts.
Academics are expected to donate lots of free labor or non-compensated service
Among the most constant arguments were that as academics, most people do not know the kinds and amount of “uncompensated” service that faculty do in their departments, colleges, university, for their learned organizations and in the community. And if they did they would be surprised.
Few people outside of academia, realize that doing service usually competes against the instructing and research that are the core of our professional responsibilities at our academic institutions.
Over the past few years, this squabble has come to head, in the case of peer reviewing papers for academic journals owned by multinational corporations (with expectations of increasingly rapid turnaround times) that make money off our free labor, or even rich foundations, that ask us to review grant proposals.
It’s our choice however if we want to give a lecture to a colleagues’ class, or a public presentation at another venue. And over the years some targets where we give these lectures have sometimes paid us an honorarium or even a speaking fee. Hell they may have even taken us out to a fancy dinner or two.
In most cases, however, the honoraria are seldom adequate for the time and effort on travel, and honoraria vary from one location to another.
The need or desire by faculty to do uncompensated speeches at other institutions is ultimately a personal cost benefit calculation. It depends on how you perceive your role as an academic (is it just a job or is it a career), your perceived status, competing demands on your time, including the predicted or actual amount of disruption you may incur to your life (i.e., cancelling or rescheduling of classes), and perhaps disruption to your significant other, families, or pet may experience, including other resources you will expend getting there and back and your competing demands at any given time.
I think it’s okay to ask for an honorarium, but at the same time I don’t believe that we should expect to receive one either.
That being said, we should also not feel constrained about saying ‘no’.
Photo Credit
Richard P. Feynman letter (1965 Noble Prize recipient for physics)
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2021-11-08-at-11.36.02-PM.png655790Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-11-11 15:28:562021-11-11 15:49:20Should scholars have to ask for honorariums? It depends
If you are a professor working at a liberal arts college or university, or hoping to be hired by an institution of higher learning in this capacity, you are expected to conduct research and have it published in respectable, preferably peer-reviewed outlets.
By the same token, you may also care deeply about your neighborhood, city or society including the wellbeing of the people and most creatures that live and work there. Thus when you believe that these entities are threatened you may participate politically by signing a petition, donating money to an important cause, joining a group advocating or fighting for social or policy change, marching in a demonstrations, giving speeches, etc.. Most of the time the choice of how to best assist the cause/s you believe in is not clear, especially how much and what types of resources (especially how much time) you should devote to them.
Naturally, the perennial challenges that many instructors and professors who are in this situation face, are balancing the competing demands among your numerous obligations, including the ones that you experience in your role as a researcher or activist.
You may see these two interests or roles as competing. In other words, the more you spend on one activity, the less you can spend on the other. Or you may flirt with, embrace, or master one of the two roles (i.e., activist versus scholar or vice versa).
How might this happen? You may identify more with one role over the other depending on the degree to which you agree with the activists and scholars you encounter, the messages they advance, how much fun or aggravation you experience with each respective crowd, and the time you spend working together in pursuit of the same shared goal. Thus, you may be subject to a push-pull dynamic where you deepen your commitment to one network of individuals over the other.
Much harder, however, is trying to combine both roles (activist and scholar) as part of the things you do and as part of your identity. Many instructors and professors have a healthy relationship between their scholarship and activism. Although some people may question whether writing the occasional op-ed is activism, many professors frequently say that one type of activity feeds off of the other, including that both their scholarship and their teaching is activism. For example, by working for or with a group that attempts to deal with food insecurity may generate research ideas for a new paper that a professor might start. Or fighting for racial justice may expose an instructor to legal cases that they never considered before and are worth writing about in an academic context. For some professors, they may even be able to get their scholarly research into the hands of policy makers or leaders of organizations that can effect legislative change.
But there is also the dilemma of spending too much time on traditional kinds of activism and this ultimately takes away from your scholarship. Where might your activism negatively affect you? Engaging in activism has derailed many an instructor and professor, not just in the liberal arts, but those who in programs in medicine, law, or tech. Yes they may get approval from fellow activists, students they teach, and even professors and administrators in their program or universities. But they still have to deal with the numerous deadlines bearing down on them (e.g., papers and exams to grade, papers to write, etc.). If you are an adjunct instructor vying for a position in an academic department (that values scholarly research) if you have not done a sufficient amount/type of research, no amount of activism will help you be hired. Finally, if you are a tenure track professor, when it’s time for the decision for tenure and promotion to come around, no matter how much your colleagues agree with your activism, they will typically not cut you slack and give you a pass because you failed to meet some organizational mandated standard of research productivity.
Granted, as you career progresses, as you move up through the ranks (including securing tenure), you may believe that you have more time and freedom to engage in activism, but there may also be new things that you have to consider. These may include different and additional pressures on your time (e.g., building a family, etc.), mentoring students, supervising graduate students, university service requirements, etc. If your activism negatively affects your ability to do your job, and results in possible job loss, or even incarceration this can have very real negative effects. Thus activism may end up taking a back seat. In short, and moving forward it’s important to do a good job estimating the costs and benefits (both pecuniary and emotional), and carefully engage where you believe that your efforts can make the most amount of difference.
Photo Credit
Photographer: Hernán Piñera
Title: Protest march
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/16274551675_bb1d8bb9cf_o-scaled.jpg14402560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-11-04 15:19:002022-12-15 12:19:40Balancing scholarship with activism for professors working at liberal arts colleges and universities
Three cheers for divisions in learned societies
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOne of the principle concepts in the field of cell biology is mitosis.
This natural process occurs when a cell or organism splits into two.
A similar situation happens in many learned societies (e.g., American Sociological Association, American Political Science Association, etc.).
Over time, as knowledge accumulates and new people study a phenomenon, they may feel that their interests would be better served if they joined or formed a brand new unit of a learned society under the auspices of the parent organization.
Along with likeminded members, they may start by holding their own panels, and progress to constructing a website, producing a newsletter or journal, and holding their own social. Down the road, they may even split away from the host organization.
Creating and managing a subdivision, especially if it’s done in a professional manner, can be a lot of time consuming work for individuals and groups considering this option. Nevertheless divisions in major learned organizations provide numerous benefits both for the parent organization and for individual members.
For the large learned organization, it is a way to devolve some the responsibilities for communicating, educating, and socializing members into the wider learned society and professional culture of the profession.
Just like extracurricular groups in high school and universities, subdivisions of learned organizations often:
• Minimize alienation felt by new and existing members of the larger organization. People who are new to the learned society may find a subdivision to be an easier point of access to the larger learned society. They may find others similar to themselves much quicker, than by bouncing around the larger learned society.
• Enable members to gain valuable leadership and management experience in a low risk environment. Most subdivisions have lots of openings for positions that few members want to do (e.g., treasurer, secretary, etc.). Much of the experienced gained in working in these positions are transferable to academic positions like chairs of departments, assistant deans etc.
• Assist in the development of members and the profession.
• Facilitate another opportunity for the mentoring of graduate students and junior faculty
• Allows additional publication opportunities (i.e., outlets) to members, especially junior ones, like graduate students.
• Experiment with new forms of member engagement that might be more challenging for the parent organization to accomplish. In this case smaller typically means nimbler.
Divisions are not perfect, but their benefits usually outweigh any negative arguments against their establishment. And when a division of a learned organization outlives its utility, they will eventually be shut down.
Photo
Painting “Hip, Hip, Hurrah! Artists’ Party in Skagen” (1888),
by Peder Severin Krøyer,
in Gothenberg’s Museum of Art.
Should scholars have to ask for honorariums? It depends
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThis past week, in a small corner of the twitterverse, a mild storm erupted. This squall centered on a reply written by a junior African American faculty member. The academic, who works at a top ten private university, expressed displeasure with being asked to give a face-to-face lecture at another university, (not in a conference venue), in his area of expertise, and not be paid an honorarium as compensation or recognition for his time and effort.
Judging by the numerous responses and some of the tangents that posters engaged in, regardless of the scholarly discipline, the issue about giving uncompensated papers, speeches or talks at an external venue was bounded by six main arguments. Although not the result of a rigorous content analysis, here is what I believe were the principal arguments of the posters:
Delivering speeches without the expectation of honoraria takes place in lots of fields beyond academia
Some people said that giving talks for free to external audiences is not unique to academia and happens in both the nonprofit and corporate world. The implication here is academics should not feel singled out.
Giving free talks to external audiences is what scholars do
Other replies argued that our profession, regardless of payment, or how much or how little we are paid, requires and enables us to do this sort of free labor. Thus, we should not expect to be compensated for giving uncompensated talks to external audience. By extension the dissemination of our ideas should take primacy over economic compensation.
Giving papers to external audiences increases our prestige and network, thus getting an honorarium should be a secondary consideration
Some of the responders indicated that giving speeches (without remuneration) is an excellent opportunity to showcase our work, disseminate our ideas, possibly help us to improve our reputation (thus value) both at our university and beyond, part of the activism they engage in, and refusing to give a paper primarily because an external venue refuses to pay an honorarium is counterproductive to your career.
Some institutions don’t have money in their budgets to give speakers an honorarium
Another argument was that some institutions where you might give a talk may not have the budget to pay honorariums to external speakers. Although this may be true, with some colleges and universities, the labor involved in setting up and receiving an honorarium, regardless of how paltry it may be, is often a nightmare of epic proportions. It requires those extending the invitation to coordinate with “the right people” in the organization, to give them the correct form/s to fill out, the correct way etc. In the end the inviter, may not want to go through the hassle, and just tells the speaker that there is no honorarium.
People of Color (POC) are exploited by academic institutions and lack of honorariums hits POC more than it does white scholars
Another frequent reply suggested that minority faculty are often asked by their departments, colleges, and universities to do more uncompensated service than their white colleagues. This exploitation exists in some part because POC academics are asked to serve on or chair “diversity” committees, searches, and participate on university panels that bring attention to “racial disparities” in some shape or form, etc. The logical extension of this argument was that POC academics are disproportionately asked to give papers at external institutions in which their efforts are uncompensated (i.e., no honorarium) than their white counterparts.
Academics are expected to donate lots of free labor or non-compensated service
Among the most constant arguments were that as academics, most people do not know the kinds and amount of “uncompensated” service that faculty do in their departments, colleges, university, for their learned organizations and in the community. And if they did they would be surprised.
Few people outside of academia, realize that doing service usually competes against the instructing and research that are the core of our professional responsibilities at our academic institutions.
Over the past few years, this squabble has come to head, in the case of peer reviewing papers for academic journals owned by multinational corporations (with expectations of increasingly rapid turnaround times) that make money off our free labor, or even rich foundations, that ask us to review grant proposals.
Summing up: Moving on
What’s clear is that there is considerable misperception both inside and outside academia about the kind of work and incentive structures of academics, and the variety of institutions from R1 to comprehensive.
It’s our choice however if we want to give a lecture to a colleagues’ class, or a public presentation at another venue. And over the years some targets where we give these lectures have sometimes paid us an honorarium or even a speaking fee. Hell they may have even taken us out to a fancy dinner or two.
In most cases, however, the honoraria are seldom adequate for the time and effort on travel, and honoraria vary from one location to another.
The need or desire by faculty to do uncompensated speeches at other institutions is ultimately a personal cost benefit calculation. It depends on how you perceive your role as an academic (is it just a job or is it a career), your perceived status, competing demands on your time, including the predicted or actual amount of disruption you may incur to your life (i.e., cancelling or rescheduling of classes), and perhaps disruption to your significant other, families, or pet may experience, including other resources you will expend getting there and back and your competing demands at any given time.
I think it’s okay to ask for an honorarium, but at the same time I don’t believe that we should expect to receive one either.
That being said, we should also not feel constrained about saying ‘no’.
Photo Credit
Richard P. Feynman letter (1965 Noble Prize recipient for physics)
Balancing scholarship with activism for professors working at liberal arts colleges and universities
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIf you are a professor working at a liberal arts college or university, or hoping to be hired by an institution of higher learning in this capacity, you are expected to conduct research and have it published in respectable, preferably peer-reviewed outlets.
Although some colleges and universities have higher expectations about the type and amount of scholarship you produce, and where it is published, research is necessary and often spelled out in your employment contract or your institutions’ guidelines for tenure and promotion.
By the same token, you may also care deeply about your neighborhood, city or society including the wellbeing of the people and most creatures that live and work there. Thus when you believe that these entities are threatened you may participate politically by signing a petition, donating money to an important cause, joining a group advocating or fighting for social or policy change, marching in a demonstrations, giving speeches, etc.. Most of the time the choice of how to best assist the cause/s you believe in is not clear, especially how much and what types of resources (especially how much time) you should devote to them.
Naturally, the perennial challenges that many instructors and professors who are in this situation face, are balancing the competing demands among your numerous obligations, including the ones that you experience in your role as a researcher or activist.
You may see these two interests or roles as competing. In other words, the more you spend on one activity, the less you can spend on the other. Or you may flirt with, embrace, or master one of the two roles (i.e., activist versus scholar or vice versa).
How might this happen? You may identify more with one role over the other depending on the degree to which you agree with the activists and scholars you encounter, the messages they advance, how much fun or aggravation you experience with each respective crowd, and the time you spend working together in pursuit of the same shared goal. Thus, you may be subject to a push-pull dynamic where you deepen your commitment to one network of individuals over the other.
Much harder, however, is trying to combine both roles (activist and scholar) as part of the things you do and as part of your identity. Many instructors and professors have a healthy relationship between their scholarship and activism. Although some people may question whether writing the occasional op-ed is activism, many professors frequently say that one type of activity feeds off of the other, including that both their scholarship and their teaching is activism. For example, by working for or with a group that attempts to deal with food insecurity may generate research ideas for a new paper that a professor might start. Or fighting for racial justice may expose an instructor to legal cases that they never considered before and are worth writing about in an academic context. For some professors, they may even be able to get their scholarly research into the hands of policy makers or leaders of organizations that can effect legislative change.
But there is also the dilemma of spending too much time on traditional kinds of activism and this ultimately takes away from your scholarship. Where might your activism negatively affect you? Engaging in activism has derailed many an instructor and professor, not just in the liberal arts, but those who in programs in medicine, law, or tech. Yes they may get approval from fellow activists, students they teach, and even professors and administrators in their program or universities. But they still have to deal with the numerous deadlines bearing down on them (e.g., papers and exams to grade, papers to write, etc.). If you are an adjunct instructor vying for a position in an academic department (that values scholarly research) if you have not done a sufficient amount/type of research, no amount of activism will help you be hired. Finally, if you are a tenure track professor, when it’s time for the decision for tenure and promotion to come around, no matter how much your colleagues agree with your activism, they will typically not cut you slack and give you a pass because you failed to meet some organizational mandated standard of research productivity.
Granted, as you career progresses, as you move up through the ranks (including securing tenure), you may believe that you have more time and freedom to engage in activism, but there may also be new things that you have to consider. These may include different and additional pressures on your time (e.g., building a family, etc.), mentoring students, supervising graduate students, university service requirements, etc. If your activism negatively affects your ability to do your job, and results in possible job loss, or even incarceration this can have very real negative effects. Thus activism may end up taking a back seat. In short, and moving forward it’s important to do a good job estimating the costs and benefits (both pecuniary and emotional), and carefully engage where you believe that your efforts can make the most amount of difference.
Photo Credit
Photographer: Hernán Piñera
Title: Protest march