I wish I had been assigned Thomas Haskell’s Objectivity is Not Neutrality in graduate school. Of course the book was published in 1998, right when I began my graduate work at Loyola. New books were often assigned in our courses (though I sometimes resented that–having a strong desire to learn the classics of history first). But Haskell’s Objectivity was too new, I think, to garner the necessary attention for the instructor in our theory and methods course (who, for my iteration, was focused on gender and feminism). Besides, Haskell’s book would’ve competed against that other classic by Novick on the subject of objectivity in history. And Novick rightly should’ve won out.
My wish for the assignment of Haskell’s book derives from its second section, “Objectivity in Its Institutional Setting.” That section happens to contain a critique of Novick’s book—which by itself might’ve made Haskell’s tome appropriate for graduate study. But I’m mostly wistful that I completed, only today, Haskell’s now 34-year-old essay titled “Professionalism versus Capitalism.” For those counting at home: No, my math isn’t incorrect. Although Haskell’s *Objectivity* book was published in 1998, the essay on professionalism appeared earlier, in 1984, in a collection he edited called The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Indiana Press).
The essay I mentioned—the full title being “Professionalism versus Capitalism: Tawney, Durkheim, and C.S. Peirce on the Distinterestedness of Professional Communities”—is alone worth the price of admission. How so?
First, Haskell explained to me the true source of the theoretical construct behind my Great Books/Adler book—namely the notion of a “community of discourse.” I had attributed that to David Hollinger, having seen him use it effectively in the 1979 New Directions volume. But he apparently received it (implicitly or explicitly) from Charles Sanders Peirce. I don’t know how I missed that during my first round of digging.
Second, if I had read Haskell and Peirce, I would not have missed how much market ideals are embedded in that peculiar notion of a professional/intellectual/academic community. Of course Haskell posits that these professional communities are based in a non-pecuniary market that also functions as a countervailing force to the larger economic market. And that basis informs Haskell’s respect for the ideal and his lived environment of professionalism, as of the two publications (1984/1998) and longer. I happen to think this superstructure was built on a faulty economic base, but I’ll save that for later. Since Adler’s and Hutchins’ ideals and actions constituted something of a monopoly in the history of the great books idea, I didn’t have to deal too much with intellectual competition in my book (The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). That said, I posited several iterations of the great books idea that overlapped, and sometimes competed with each other in low-grade ways (e.g. multiculturalism v. liberalism v. conservatism v. Britannica/the great ideas v. general honors). But Adler’s vision, however it changed, generally won out, no matter how many historical actors were involved in conversations with him.
Third, if I had read this particular Haskell meditation earlier, I would be much more informed of, and savvy about, some aspects of the history profession that have troubled me for years. Namely, its built-in competitiveness. By this I mean a competitiveness that overshadows a mere “marketplace of ideas” for historical narratives and theory. Haskell thinks that a non-pecuniary, countervailing professional competition salvages, for the most part, the field and can help it function in a healthy fashion. He has cautions and caveats, but his essay leaves one feeling that the profession can work. But Haskell, I can see now in retrospect, underestimated the potential of certain kinds of pressures in the academy that have eroded the notion of professions as independent communities of intellectuals in healthy competition with each other. Since the publication of his essay, deans, trustees, presses, and students (as consumers) have all grown in influence. Each party has brought to bear certain outside social/economic market pressures on the professional community, via the base position in each institution, that has undermined the internal standards those communities. Those non-history-professional actors have increasingly relied on business and market ideas in an overall social and economic climate that has sacralized those same ideals. Instead of the professions containing a capitalist remedy for the defects of capitalism, the larger disease of hyper-competitiveness, or commodification, has infected rather than inoculated the professions.
I could go on about Haskell’s essay and book. He is helping me understand better the notion of expertise overall, and certain attendant forms of anti-intellectualism, ignorance, unreason, and anti-elitism. But I wish, this year, I had been rereading and deepening my understanding of Haskell’s work, rather than reading it for the first time. Haskell’s virtues would’ve helped me understand some of the defects of my graduate training. – TL
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Tim, we are on the same page, kind of. This morning I am reading Tom Bender’s essay collection, Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the United States. Both of these fine historians belonged to the same “discourse community” as Stanford PhD students, and of course both articulated a vision for the future of intellectual history at Wingspread, and both were concerned with how those same market pressures shaped intellectual life, particularly as manifested in institutions and disciplines.
I think I was assigned to read Haskell’s title essay — which was a review of Novick — for my historiography class with Michelle Nickerson. I ended up purchasing the whole collection shortly thereafter. That semester — Spring 2011 — was my galactic brain semester. But I laugh now at how very little of what I read I actually understood, even as I recognize how much what I read transformed my understanding. Re-reading is one of life’s great delights.
And it seems to me that these historians in particular bear re-reading now — as does the Wingspread collection — precisely because we seem to be at an inflection point in the history of American higher education, which has been the preferred institutional home of professional American intellectual life during the long 20th century. (I think the long 20th century runs from, say, 1890 to 2016, but YMMV).
In any case, I’m glad to be on the same page, even if the story going forward is heading in a disheartening direction. Surely intellectual life will continue — but American higher education as it flourished in the long 20th century most likely will not. Or so it seems to me now. But predicting the future is not my bag, thank heavens.
Wait a minute. I don’t think Bender is a Stanford PhD (no offense to Bender.) I confused him w/ Kloppenberg. TBH, I’m not sure *where* Bender got his PhD (not that it matters!)
See, I still can’t keep anything straight. Too much dark matter in my galactic brain!
Lora: Sorry for this slow reply. Between Easter family commitments and other activities, I underestimated my time yesterday for replies.
Rereading is indeed one of life’s great delights. I also happen to think it’s a professional obligation, in relation to books one needs to understand thoroughly for their own scholarship. I’m sure I’ve read Joan Shelley Rubin’s fine book on middlebrow culture at least 5 times—same goes with Adler’s two autobiographies, and How to Read a Book. I’ve read Age of Fracture twice, I think–and Cronon’s *Nature’s Metropolis* about 5-6 times. And of course one should periodically reread the books we teach in courses (though it’s impossible to do that every term). I’ve read the Wingspread New Directions book a few times, but am due for a reread.
On your pessimism about intellectual life in universities, I see it, but I don’t necessarily share it, or think it’s not reversible. The key is hold ground now, and build out again in certain areas. A great start would be forming faculty unions across the U.S., in every single higher-ed institution, in order to buttress tenure and ensure that baseline economic “goods” are insured for all faculty, not just stars and full professors. The profession needs more socialism and less capitalism. That will reinvigorate the professional societies that Haskell held dear. I think that academic socialism guarantees a firmer baseline intellectualism (or at least better fights anti-intellectualism among professors). But enough on my opinions.
No worries on the Bender-Kloppenberg confusion. Flu diminishes my fact-checking abilities! – TL
A general strike of all tenured faculty across the United States, beginning on, I dunno, October 9, 2018, might be in order. Of course, as an at-will employee in a right-to-work state, that’s not something I would advocate, as it might imperil my own employment. But I suppose someone in an organized-labor-friendly state might take up a cause like that.
The work of Andrew Abbott (e.g., Chaos of Disciplines, 2001) seems to be widely cited and probably bears on some of the issues raised in the OP and comment. Haven’t read it, so can’t say more. (But I will venture the opinion that historians concerned w “communities of discourse,” formation of the modern academic disciplines, hist. of higher education, etc., may be making a mistake if they stay in their own disciplinary silo and read only work by historians and not, e.g., by sociologists, of which Abbott is one.)
Louis: Thanks for the reference. Abbott’s book looks to be more anthropology than history. But it’s still in print. I’ll see if I can get a copy. – TL
Update: I can’t acquire *Chaos of Disciplines*, but I can get this other book by Abbott, *The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor.*
Tim, I’d be interested in what you think of Abbott, when/if you get a chance to look at it.
I’m always interested in smart writing about professionalism. Any other suggestions?
Roger: On professionalism, or on professional societies and expertise? – TL
Either / or, really. I’m familiar with the Haskell essay, as well as some forays into similar issues in literary studios–Bruce Robbin’s book Secular Vocations (which addresses Haskell, if I recall correctly) and Stephen Schryer’s Fantasies of the New Class come immediately to mind.
A quick sort of p.s. to my comment above: I. Wallerstein et al., Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (1996) is roughly two decades old, but my sense is that not all that much has been done in the way of implementing its recommendations. (Btw, the report included history as one of the social sciences for its purposes.)