A simple rule

I entirely agree with this piece.

I suggest a simple rule. One shouldn’t take a flight unless one spends one night at the destination for every hour flying time for the return journey.

That should restrict flights to substantial visits. It would also, incidentally, save people considerable time to devote to more substantial activities.

Gavin, Principal Policy Adviser at Griffith University, Australia, at 6:20 am EST on November 26, 2007

Universities and Climate Change

This is the kind of outside-the-box contribution we need to see more often. As someone who is not a scientist and spends not a day without thinking at some point about climate change, I welcome its sense of personal responsibility and reflectiveness about what we in universities can do to try to avert the world disaster we know is looming.

However, I wonder if the prescription is likely to induce guilt more than change. There are too many incentives for continued conferences, talks, etc., involving distance travel. From the individual academic’s standpoint, to cease attending invited talks on such grounds will only decrease one’s professional profile and annual accomplishments, thus affecting adversely one’s viability on the job market and salary. From the institutional standpoint, programs that attract top scholars to speak enhance the institution’s prestige and the quality of thought of its own faculty and students, so travel is unlikely to be curtailed. The day that UCLA stops bringing in outside speakers, or reduces them significantly, will be the day that it begins to fall in the US News rankings. This is the problem: there are too many disincentives to reducing travel (despite the undoubted appeal to administrators of the prospect of cutting faculty travel budgets).

I think universities could play two more significant roles in reducing global warming:

First, they could consider this far more intensively in their development and building. Here on our campus a new administration building went up two years ago. I tried to argue for a solar component, to make the building generate its own energy at least in part, and was shot down on expense grounds. I found this unbelievably short-sighted, since in twenty years I anticipate other energy costs will be astronomical. I also think that expense is warranted given the planetary predicament. What a beacon the universities could be if they became not merely energy efficient but self-sustaining, premised on renewable resources.

Second, universities and their faculties have a vital role to play in educating the public. Americans are simply not all on the same page as the New York Times, Al Gore, and the scientific consensus. My students here — and I’m sure they’re not unique — still are full of jokes about global warming when the subject arises that indicate their lack of registering its full significance. Some of them show irresponsibility (it only matters for future generations, not ours) or denial (it’s not linked to CO2 emissions or any human endeavor). Others, of course, are aware and concerned, and a few are active, but... we have a surprisingly long way to go and as educational institutions, universities have a key role in education on this cardinal issue.

Here is the kicker: the last point might entail bringing in outside experts for major addresses, to generate local press and to bring community people onto campus — and therefore it might entail air travel. Would the air travel be warranted? I think so.

Christopher Phelps, Department of History at The Ohio State University, at 9:00 am EST on November 26, 2007

I doubt that global warming will be helped by shutting down pursuits of knowledge that may lead to important advances. Since we do not know exactly where advances may come from, shutting down knowledge-generating fileds in general may slow our ability to deal with warming-related threats. In fact, arguing that the economy as a whole should stop what it is doing in order to conserve would have a similar destructive effect. I can see advising people to stop vacation travel, but stopping work travel seems unnecessary and harmful to me.

Chuck, at 9:55 am EST on November 26, 2007

Is it rational...

to be so concerned about one’s C.V. to the detriment of the world in which we live? I’m an academic, I work with academics, and every day I’m reminded of why academics are viewed the way they are in what is otherwise a non-academic society. We do the research that shows the changes other people need to make in order to help curb the effects of global warming, but we are not willing to listen to our own advice? Academia as we know it is becoming obsolete and it’s because of issues like this one, at least in part — we cannot continue to preach awareness of the consequences of our actions if we are not willing to do the same! Technology allows us to actively develop our professional reputations, so why don’t we use it?

Fed Up, at 10:35 am EST on November 26, 2007

like movie stars?

Dear Colleagues:

I regard Joyce Appleby and Nikkie Keddie as two of my favorite historians—primarily because of their attachment to evidence-based empirical historical research and elegantly organized and presented narratives.

So, it is with some discomfort that I must respond to their interesting intervention in the global-warming debates with a simple question: “Huh?”

I do not question the fact that virtually every human activity contributes to global warming whether it be intercontinental jet planes, LA Freeway trafic jams, the cattle in India or rice paddies in Southeast Asia.

But to be honest, the notion that cutting down on travel to conferences will do much to save the planet strikes me as limited in its reach. It certainly will appeal to college and university administrators who can cut the budget by eliminating faculty travel grants; and it will free up a bunch of seats on airplanes for other good folks.

But may I offer a small hurrah for face to face encounters with colleagues in other places? Conference video setups may seem to be an adequate replacement, but I have never experienced one where some technical problem did not crop up. More importantly, a good conference video led me to want to have time to speak to the person individually, not possible under the setup.Face-to-face meetings, which in my field are rare enough, offer an intangible dimension to future “virtual” contacts by e-mail or conference call or video—but without them, a vital element is lost.

I think that there are, in my field of Asian history, a handful of great names who are often ‘out and about’ on the circuit. I see that in part as a reflection of a modern cult of personality and celebrity which is common to more than scholarly endeavors. There was the joke told to me once at Columbia (and I am sure other versions are told elsewhere) “What is the difference between God and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak?” “God is EVERYWHERE, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is everywhere but HERE.”

Professors Appleby and Keddie state in their contribution: “many scholars and administrators fly back and forth across the continent and around the globe about as frequently as movie stars.” Well, some of them are treated like movie stars, but they are not the ones who need a travel grant to get to their one annual professional meeting! I am sure that the comparison to movie stars will be greeted by most academic readers with ‘friendly curiosity.’

As for regional meetings—in recent years many regional meetings have declined in attendance and vitality (your meeting, of course is the exception!). I attribute this to the prestige drives of modern academic credentialism on the one hand and airline deregulation on the other. When it costs participants more to fly to a conference at a site served by a smaller airport on a regional carrier than it does to head to the bright lights of the national conference in Chicago, Atlanta or Washington, D.C., one’s administrators will be pleased to save the money on airfare. But wait, I forgot, Professors Appleby and Keddie will have encouraged said administrators to cut out those travel grants anyway.

As co-founder and editor of an international H-NET discussion list on Asian Studies, I can attest to the fact that ‘virtual communities’ can exist and can enrich scholarly lives, but my view is that these communities are groups of “friends who haven’t met yet” and the emphasis is equally on friends and on yet.

So, to take up another World War II expression, “keep ‘em flying.”

Frank F. Conlon Professor Emeritus University of WashingtonEditor, H-ASIA

Frank F. Conlon, Professor Emeritus at University of Washington, at 11:10 am EST on November 26, 2007

Rationality

“Fed Up": On a moral level I concur with you. I’m going to consider travel more carefully as a result of this piece.

But on a practical level of doing something about the problem, the idea of travel reduction is unlikely to take hold, for the reasons I specified. It’s not building the c.v. in an egocentric fashion but rather the many incentives built into taking such travel opportunities, both individually and institutionally. Some of these are healthy incentives, not to be held in contempt. I suspect even you attend conferences now and then and won’t cut them out. Why? Because you learn a lot there, make important connections that help you in research and thought, and because it stimulates you to higher levels of accomplishment.

We should think hard about how to reduce global warming, but I’m not sure travel is the first culprit (or that eliminating it or even substantially cutting it is practical or ideal for universities).

Christopher Phelps, Department of History at The Ohio State University, at 11:25 am EST on November 26, 2007

Science, Knowledge, Research

What about a consortium of major universities designing together a massive research study on ways to reduce air flight emissions or to entirely eliminate such harmful emissions, whether by alternative fuels, efficiency, or some other means?

For all I know, something like that is already underway. In any case, that would be a more practical and substantial way for universities to commit themselves to solve human-caused global overheating. It would marshall the very purpose of a university, research, rather than trying to run contrary to a university’s mission (part of which is international intellectual exchange, inevitably dependent on travel).

Christopher Phelps, Department of History at The Ohio State University, at 12:10 pm EST on November 26, 2007

This is really valid. As technology develops, the problems associate with video conferencing should end. This is the age of the internet and it should end this endless conference hopping often encouraged by those in elitist institutions to the detriment of those who face limited funding (if any at all). One prestigious conference is choosing the most expensive city in the world for 2009 — Tokyo. Global warming means that we should all adapt and this is now true for academic in ending conference travel.

TW, at 6:25 pm EST on November 26, 2007

Hot air

If this is the type of intellectual thinking we get from our institutions of higher learning, maybe it would be best if we reduced our carbon footprint by shutting all our universities down. Before we all jump on the Chicken Little theory that the sky is falling, keep in mind that there are also valid theories out there that would indicate global warming is not man made at all but rather natural fluctuations of the Earth climate. To completely disavow this is intellectual dishonesty.

John, Marquette University, at 4:15 pm EST on November 27, 2007

Save some money!

I would agree with the goal to reduce the number of trips taken, but for a different reason. Perhaps the money saved from taking fewer nonessential trips could be used for something like hiring an additional faculty or staff member. This could be yet another example of mixing environmental good with fiscal restraint.

Robert, PhD Student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, at 11:00 am EST on November 28, 2007

I find it surprising that the question, “Is this trip really necessary?” is a WWII slogan. In Third World countries, we ask that question all of the time.

Ralfy, at 5:15 am EST on November 30, 2007