O. Alan Weltzien
English
Western Mt. College-UM
As Montana Professor readers well know, the 1990s have witnessed vociferous and sour criticism of the higher-education enterprise and predictably, an increasing number of voices raised in its defense. As his sub-title makes clear, ethnohistorian James Axtell's collection joins the latter chorus. And while his defense is a pleasure to read, usually evidencing bonhomie and occasionally clever wit, it becomes harder to determine precisely what, if anything, sounds new.
In his preface, Axtell advertises his credentials, claiming he "bring[s] to the discussion the unusual perspective of somone educated in English as well as American universities, an athlete as well as a student, an interdisciplinary scholar, and a tenured, even chaired, professor whose insider's love of academe is tempered by familiarity with its long history as well as its current foibles and foolishness" (x). Axtell has an unusual breadth of view even if his essays in large measure rehash the already familiar. Axtell's is a good-news story; he admits in the preface, "I want to devote the rest of this book to some of the good news about academic life" (xi). Sometimes, I fear, his good cheer borders on smugness, and some readers whose professional lives do not resemble the privileged insider's will tire of Axtell's steady pleasure with his own lot. The bragging--for example, his half dozen media appearances, or the number of copies sold of several of his books--wears thin.
In familiar fashion, Axtell's preface reviews the genesis of the book; in familiar fashion, about half of it already existed as separate published essays or lectures. The resulting miscellany--unsurprisingly--feels uneven as certain chapters compel while others merely amuse. Inevitably some redundancy accrues, but not a lot. Little cross-referencing exists apart from the long conclusion. Axtell tries to create a tight structure with his title's two key words: in the contents, the word "Academic" precedes the first five chapters while "Pleasures" precedes the next six (i.e., Chapters 6-11). Yet what constitutes "academic" and "pleasures" overlaps considerably, and the ordering of chapters feels looser than, say, the ordering of an argument. Axtell cleverly selects chapter epigraphs though he could treat them more exegetically. If the book's argument concerns "the good news about academic life," it's hard to determine Axtell's intended audience. Presumably he does not want merely to preach to the academic choir, whose experiences may not always be as serene as his own or whose conclusions differ. But those existing on the fringes of academe, unable to enter or secure a tenure-track position, or the otherwise marginalized, might find Axtell's sanguine account frustrating or depressing to the extent it remains out of reach. As for the academy bashers, Axtell's best chapters and his lengthy conclusion--the book's longest chapter--answer many of their accusations, but I wonder how many will read this book?
Some of the chapters, devoted to such topics as chronic book buying and collecting, life as a scholar-athlete, or summer family vacations with a researcher-paterfamilias, range between winning self-irony and affection, and a less flattering self-indulgence. For example, in an era marked by college sports as quasi-professional big business and rearguard NCAA sanctions, when we struggle to define and maintain the student-athlete, Axtell's autobiographical evocation of the scholar-athlete reads, at times, as precious and otherworldly. That said, he makes a good case for the complementarity of academic and athletic lives and how lessons learned from one domain apply in the other.
The core of The Pleasures of Academe resides in the opening, third, and ninth chapters--"(Mis)Understanding Academic Work," "Twenty-five Reasons to Publish," and "Extracurriculum," respectively--and the conclusion, which Axtell claims "distinguishes the real problems of American higher education from the major misunderstandings and calumnies that critics, largely nonacademic conservatives, have perpetrated about and against the professoriate" (xv). He lists two "major misunderstandings," arguing that there are no crises in higher education--the first misunderstanding--and that such apocalyptic talk is "manufactured by variously motivated media and ideologues" (210) who have grown in frequency and stridency during this fin de siècle decade. But Axtell wastes no time taking on the critics, disputing in Chapter 1 the frequent lies about professors' lazy work habits and detailing the range of daily and seasonal work characteristic of the professoriate: material others have told and Axtell elaborates in later chapters. He addresses the general ignorance about research and teaching: "While scholarly research is the most mysterious aspect of professorial life, teaching may be the most misunderstood" (8). I second his conclusions that most professors "are convinced that they have the best job in the world" (25), that they control their own schedules more than most, and that "the amorphousness of [their] schedule constitutes a persistent pressure that is seldom or never fully relieved" (26). That amorphousness also explains public hostility, particularly as the hostility exacerbates a chronic anti-intellectualism in American culture (11). Eggheads remain easy targets, eternal cartoon figures.
In these core chapters, Axtell takes the three traditional domains of the professorial life--teaching, scholarship, and service--and convincingly integrates them (e.g., 148). For Axtell, scholarship defines the essential pleasure of academe; teaching and service emanate from scholarship. He cites Ernest Boyer's 1990 Carnegie report, Scholarship Reconsidered, and pays lip service to its expanded conception of scholarship. But generally Axtell dismisses teaching and privileges scholarship. For example, he maintains that scholarship remains the most steadfast and reliable assessment of teaching, "that infinitely individual and personalized act" (90). He makes passing reference to teaching portfolios (89-90) only to dismiss them. Axtell does not study or present, however briefly, the increasingly rich literature on teaching portfolios; perhaps he is unaware of it. Certainly his sense that teaching by definition cannot subject itself in any substantive way to peer review enjoys some support. But I find it hard to argue that "infinitely individual and personalized" teaching exists that far away from "infinitely individual and personalized" writing, scholarly or creative. Rather, both activities overlap; both ground themselves in an academic's subjective experience. By downplaying the evaluation of teaching due to its difficulty, Axtell sings the well-worn theme song of the prestigious institutions he's been associated with. It's the German research university model all over again.
He could certainly boil down his "Twenty-five Reasons to Publish," which suffer from redundancy. But I have no quarrel with his review of the scholarship-teaching marriage, excepting his devaluation of ars pedagogica. Given his overarching theme on the pleasures of scholarship, it's sad that Axtell does not incisively analyze the institutional contexts--support, disincentives, mandates--of scholarship. About the long-familiar publish or perish ideology, he only gestures vaguely: "If...such institutions employ a traditionally narrow notion of scholarship based on typographic tonnage rather than importance of subject, depth of research, quality of thought, felicity of expression, and imagination, they deserve our pity as well as our scorn" (49). Pity and scorn don't get us far. Where is the analysis of institutional support for the professor's primary calling? Furthermore, the very definition of broad scholarship implied here sounds awfully close to pedagogy, which he keeps suggesting exists beyond the capacity of, for example, peer evaluation.
Chapters of the author's professional autobiography, for example his gradual conversion from John Locke scholarship to North American colonial ethnohistory (Chapter 8), make for interesting reading. And the occasional witty flourishes win us over and excuse, at least a bit, the occasional repetitiveness and smugness. On his earliest scholarship, he states, "While writing my dissertation on John Locke, I prematurely launched my hoped-for scholarly career by publishing three short articles, two of which were caesareaned from the dissertation; the other was the love child of a more innocent commencement-summer fling" (118). Or, describing his role during the Columbus Quincentenary, he notes, "As an Indian historian but also chairman of the American Historical Association's Quincentenary Committee, I tried to bring some balance and historical sense to the debate but often found myself between a rock and a hardnose" (169).
Axtell's conclusion seems his most substantial section, in which he rebuts the charges of the strident chorus attacking the academy. He argues that no pervasive higher-education crisis exists and that "most of our higher educational problems are either much less serious than they are alleged to be or they cannot be attributed solely to or solved by the professoriate" (210-11). After listing ten "major problems" to which he adds the problem of grade inflation (214-16), Axtell analyzes five areas or "scores"--politics, curriculum, tenure, research, and teaching--which critics target, offering his own "informed, admittedly upbeat but I hope not Pollyannaish perspective" (217).
As I have said, at times Axtell sounds Pollyannaish, writing as if things are mostly hunky-dory when they may not be. With that reservation, Axtell mounts a sound "Celebration & Defense." I think he correctly reads the "promulgation of the PC [political correctness] myth," "a carefully orchestrated, well-financed campaign of exaggerated misinformation for ideological and political purposes" (218-19) that lingers as a "rhetorical virus." His discussion and conclusion about the curriculum--that "Recent alarms over the curriculum...are largely unwarranted" (226)--presents the chapter in miniature. With tenure, Axtell draws distinctions, qualifies stereotypes (e.g., the "dead wood" cliche), and states strong economic arguments favoring it. His discussion of scholarship reviews territory covered in his third chapter, above all the commonplace that the best scholars form the best teachers. He cites data to counter stupid myths about college teaching getting worse or receiving lower priority. Axtell eloquently closes his defense and book proclaiming the teacher-scholar's eternal value and admonishing us to teach the next academic generation "the professional ethic and compelling attractions of teaching" (249).
The defense of the professoriate in the conclusion feels timely, given the proliferation of internal as well as external attacks attacks upon it. Cary Nelson's "The War Against The Faculty" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 April 1999, B4-5), for example, reviews "a de facto movement against the faculty [promoted] by a corporate ideology--an ideology that is shared by many of the chief executive officers of business and industry, who serve on governing boards, and the administrators who represent them." Presumably faculty know more about curriculum, tenure, research, and teaching than other constituencies including administrators and staff. Yet many of my colleagues feel their authority in these domains is increasingly disrespected and disregarded. Is there a rising tide of ignorance and hostility? Not only grudging taxpayers but Helena legislators, forces in the Commissioner's Office, and constituencies on our campuses dispute or reject Axtell's early reminder that "the professoriate [forms] the indispensable head and heart of the university" (x). Faculty have their work cut out for them in recovering or protecting their leadership roles. I see it as an uphill battle. Given the subversive invasion of the business-consumerism metaphor, it cannot be stated often enough that "colleges and universities are not businesses like other businesses and they should never be regarded as such. They are nonprofit service organizations whose students are not ordinary customers (nor always right), whose major employees--faculty--are highly trained professionals who also largely manage the operation, and whose product cannot be counted, weighed, or depreciated" (228). Faculty must labor hard to enforce this threatened truth.