Oops. We Forgot to Teach Faculty How to Write

From Rachel Toor

We academics do not communicate like most people. One keen observer of scholarly life pointed out how it typically goes when a listener is confused:

Listener: I cannot understand what you are saying.

Speaker: Let me try to say it more clearly.

But in scholarly writing in the late 20th century, other rules apply. This is the implicit exchange:

Reader: I cannot understand what you are saying.

Academic Writer: Too bad. The problem is that you are an unsophisticated and untrained reader. If you were smarter, you would understand me .

The exchange remains implicit, because no one wants to say, "This doesn't make any sense," for fear that the response, "It would, if you were smarter," might actually be true.

Even though there are plenty of "nontraditional" presidents, most still come from the academic ranks. Habits of speech and mind can be hard to break. But smash them we must, if we want to communicate beyond our training and "tell our stories better."

To continue quoting from the essay I started with, “What is at stake here: universities and colleges are currently embattled, distrusted by the public and state funding institutions.”

Can we offer an “invitation to nonspecialists to learn from [what we] study, to grasp its importance and, by extension, to find concrete reasons to see value in the work of the university?”

Perhaps. “This is a country desperately in need of wisdom, and of clearly reasoned conviction and vision…. In a society confronted by a faltering economy, racial and ethnic conflicts, and environmental disasters, 'the woods are burning,' and since we so urgently need everyone's contribution in putting some of those fires out, there is no reason to indulge professorial vanity or timidity.”

More than thirty years ago, historian Patty Limerick gave a speech to what was then called the Association of American University Presses. A version appeared in The New York Times on Oct. 31, 1993, with the headline: “Dancing With Professors: The Trouble With Academic Prose.”

She argues that because professors are the people no one wanted to dance with in high school, they exact revenge by lording their smarts in impenetrable prose and hazing their mini-me grad students. 

It didn't matter all that much when libraries had standing orders with university presses, there were plenty of professorial jobs, and everyone needed to earn tenure. Now those turkey vultures have come home to roost. 

One of the leaders on the APLU panel suggested putting professors in front of legislators to talk about their research.

I almost screeched, No!  

That might only make things worse. While a handful of brilliant scholars are able to write beautiful books, there's little room in a graduate curriculum, even (especially!) in the humanities, to focus on the skill that undergirds all success: the ability to communicate clearly and to reach different audiences. 

Consider this: We often leave the teaching of the hardest course in a university (first-year composition) to those with the least experience (graduate TAs).  After that, there's little  instruction in writing well.  

If you wonder what's at stake, especially with apps and programs that can turn the vividness of the King James Bible into writing that would be more acceptable to thesis advisers, scholarly journals, and tenure committees, have another look at Orwell's 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language." 

It's nothing less than the rise of totalitarianism. 

We all need to learn to translate why what we do is important to others, and to say things as clearly as possible, without condescension or resorting to jargon. Part of the blame for the lack of confidence in the value of higher ed surely lies with us. We did this to ourselves. (And you're right: no one wanted to dance with me in high school.)

Here are thoughts from two presidents who learned to overcome their disciplinary training.