What are academics for?

Because we have very few fixed hours of work, university teachers are often assumed to have loads of free time. People see us taking retail therapy on a Tuesday morning or having a long lunch, and they tend to forget that all our weekend and most of the night was spent in the library. Not great for family life, as most partners of academics complain.

This makes us easy prey to all kinds of demands from those who think that we can easily give some of that “free time” to them. There are scores of  “independent television makers” who will ring you up and try to get you to plan their new programme on gladiators, sex in the ancient world,  the fall of the Roman empire, or whatever, over the phone. Now that e-mail is the standard medium of communication, we’ve got out of practice at the old art of putting the receiver down – which is, of course, why they ring.

Then there are the eager sixth-formers, who think that an enthusiastic letter or e-mail will prompt you to give them more help with their A level course work than you should by rights offer. As I can testify, there are more kids in this country working on “Roman Women” than you could possibly believe.

It is presumably in response to this kind of pressure that a senior Oxford academic has published on the web his, punningly titled, “Rules of Engagement”, for anyone wanting to use his services.

These rules consist mostly in a list of things he won’t do:

“No external lectures/conference papers will be given in term time. Only exceptionally will lectures/conference papers be given outside term”

“No books or articles will be read for publishers in advance of publication.”

“No meeting in London starting before 11.00 am or 11.30 on Mondays unless overnight stay is funded”

But there are other canny conditions laid down:

“All travel should be refunded within 6 weeks of the journey undertaken. Thereafter interest will be charged at a rate equivalent to that on my credit card. All air journeys lasting over two and a half hours will be expected to be funded at business class level.”

“Books will be reviewed for journals etc. only exceptionally, and only if they are major reviews of substantial length with a notice of at least 8 weeks.”

I can see where he is coming from. I still get angry about some universities abroad who have taken more than six months to refund my travel expenses. And certainly there have been times when rearranging my university teaching, taking a cold and uncomfortable train journey cross-country, and then talking to a handful of conscripts in a village hall has not quite seemed worth the trouble it has caused.

But what has happened to the idea of public responsibility? The fact that academics get paid (albeit inadequately) by the state surely gives them a duty to the community more widely. It may not be part of our contracts, but it is certainly part of how most of us understand the job in its widest sense, to spread our word outside the academy. Draughty church halls, lectures in unglamorous locations with no travel expenses (prisons are one of my particular favourites), short reviews in local papers all have their place on the agenda.

Most important of all are the talks to schools (strikingly absent from the “Rules of Engagement”). True, these are not lucrative and they  aren’t always exactly fun. It isn’t easy for the untrained to hold the attention of sixty or so 14 year-olds, especially when half the audience has been dragooned into your talk to give their exhausted teacher an hour off. But somewhere in there, just occasionally, is someone’s whose horizons you might change.

My husband, now an art historian, recounts just such an eye-opening moment from his own school days. He had never thought of art history as a subject you might actually study, until Nikolaus Pevsner came to his school and gave a still-remembered talk on local buildings, and – in particular – on the different architectural histories of the towns of Bristol and Bath. Cliché as it must seem, it was the start of another art-historical career.

Pevsner was already a well-established figure at that point. But I rather doubt that he laid down careful conditions about his travel expenses and his credit card bill.

Comments

[Zareen]

There is another responsibility academics have which is as important as engagement with the community: raising baby academics. When I first arrived here for my PhD programme, we were given a long orientation, one of whose modules was entitled 'Managing your relationship with your supervisor'. The key points were: It is up to you to manage this relationship. Do not expect emotional support, seek this amongst friends and family. Maintain a professional, working relationship at all times. I try to do all of these things. But inspite of this, I find that my supervisors are an invaluable personal friend, philosopher and guide. No one else can offer me support and empathy when some methodology I'd planned goes askew. No one else can say - Why don't you write a paper on this, your idea is excellent! No one else can say 'I know you can do it!' When friends or family say it, they are trying to encourage me. When my supervisor says it, he knows what it is I am trying to do, exactly how challenging it is, and whether or not I can ACTUALLY pull it off. Even though I don't expect it and am trying not to rely on it, I find my supervisors consistenly going out of their way to be supportive. And for thesis-level research, I need more of this and slightly less of technical guidance in my subject area. I'm glad to say that both of them offer me more support than I could hope to have found elsewhere, and it is part of the reason I try to do better than my best for them.

[Molly]

Thank you for such a post. I am undergraduate who often ponders the boundaries of decorum within my department. Of course, I don't realise sometimes just how much pressure the lecturers are under and, admittedly, in the past, I have demanded more than the lecturers mights have been willing or able to give. I have since learned to fly on my own (so to speak) but, still, it's good to learn the truth from someone who's willing to tell it like it is.

[Ealasaid]

I enjoyed your post on academic responsibility.
I accept that academics are busy, and it may be that the senior academic you mention has more than his fair share of importunate requests. However his rules of engagement would sit more easily with an image of him as a harried academic. His photo on Oxford University's staff page shows him sitting serenely with a glass in an elegant room.

[Carlos Machado]

Thank you so much for stating so clearly what should be obvious! At a time when the role of classics (and the History of Art) has come under criticism (or at least is seen as exotic) by society in general, we are more responsible than ever for going "out there" and speaking for a wider audience. It is an important form of making our place in society (and in governments' budgets!) legitimate.

[jedi]

I had just the same kind of experience as your husband.
I was at a 'bog standard' comprehensive...doing history A level, which was all 20th century, Hitler, the usual. For some reason a guy cam from the local uni to talk about the Tudors. I didn't intend to go, but ended up there. He wasn't hugely charismatic, but the stuff just seemed so interesting...and I've ended up doing history myself. Thanks to that talk really.