A Trilogy of Essays on Scholarship

At the beginning it is helpful to realize that the five versions of the scholarly ideal produce different forms of intellectual work with distinct goals and motivations. The scholar engaging in such activity can vary dramatically in terms of what the individual is seeking to achieve through his or her research output and actions that might be taken related to the findings reflected in that product. Similarly, there is a diverse set of targets at which the work is directed. These targets include communicating ideas and knowledge to other scholars who are invested in a specific sub-discipline. They also include overt (and covert) attempts to influence and reshape the behavior of institutions the individual scholar or scholarly collective considers to be a means through which changes thought necessary can be achieved. The five ideals are:1. Development and pursuit of original knowledge for its own sake2. Preservation, refinement and transmission of the best forms of knowledge3. Objective social critique4. Individual activism5. Collective activism.These ideals are not simply a reflection of what has been traditionally thought of as the dichotomy between “pure” and “applied” research. Nor are they necessarily on a linear continuum in which each is a variant or extension of the other. The simple fact is that each ideal in its most strict sense is different in kind and not only degree. Each represents different values, assumptions and commitments as to what is involved in the central role of the scholar.Regardless of academic rhetoric, universities are powerful institutional systems that are as doctrinaire and hidebound in their behavior as any other institution whose beneficiaries are seeking to protect vested interests or simply defend that with which they are most familiar and on which their training is based and reputations sustained. This is consistent with Keynes’ conclusion that most university faculty are little more than “academic scribblers” who live their lives content to operate within the safe confines of the ideas and reward system in which they were initially indoctrinated and from which they extract benefits. While the ideal of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is frequently offered as a justification for independent research and scholarship, the likelihood of individuals behaving in full accord with such a strongly principled norm depends on the incentives and disincentives to which they are subject.