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Scholarly standards and activism |
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Naspir's statement of purpose says: 'As what we choose to study and how we choose to study it are unavoidably political, the traditional academic pretence of neutrality is unsustainable. Scholarly standards are enhanced by explicit acknowledgement of that situation and by accounting for how one deals with it. Scholarship is a form of activism, but there is more to activism than scholarship.' This is capable of misinterpretation or misrepresentation as meaning that scholarly standards do not exist and that activist scholars can and should distort and select deliberately to achieve political goals. That would be a travesty, and has played no part in Naspir's work. I elaborated on what I see as the relationships between activism on the one hand and scholarship and teaching on the other in an article in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 35:1 (2006), 105-119. The article included the following statement: 'Always adhere to the highest scholarly standards in research and teaching Activist scholarship should involve a search for as much truth as can be uncovered, and freedom of thought in trying to uncover it. In research, this means honest and open consideration of arguments and counter-arguments, evidence and counter-evidence. In teaching, it means exposing students to the whole range of debate and sources, making sure in particular this includes full and fair coverage of positions and sources with which one disagrees, and with openness as to what constitutes the whole range. Students should feel able to hold contrary positions to ours and not feel that they will in any way be penalised for doing so, if those are well grounded in scholarly terms. Equally, students who hold similar positions should feel that they will not be in any way rewarded for doing so and must earn any rewards in scholarly terms. Even though activist scholars will think themselves correct (though not unquestioningly so) in the accuracy and moral value of their own position, teaching must not be conducted with that as the assumption. Indeed, there needs to be a positive commitment to self-questioning. Such points are universal to good scholarship, not merely to activist scholarship, but it needs to be stated to make it explicit and clear that there is no trade-off between any activism worth having and scholarly standards. Truth and freedom of thought are things we are meant to be championing. Activist academics are not necessarily more vulnerable to sacrificing scholarly standards to politics than mainstream academics, despite the tendency of mainstream academics to assume that to be the case. Indeed, making one's activist values and their political implications explicit is an important means of upholding scholarly standards. In contrast, when mainstream academics assume or assert their political neutrality they are making a political move without having to account for how it might undermine their scholarly standards.' I have seen no reason to believe that Naspir has endorsed anything which deviates in any fundamental way from this. While absolute objectivity/neutrality are not achievable, scholarly standards are not only achievable but indispensable. Eric Herring, Naspir Convenor Discuss this article in the forums. (2 posts)
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