Sherry Turkle and danah boyd
Part 2: When does a public intellectual cross the line?
It can be difficult to see the stigma of public intellectualism from outside the academic community, especially on a macro scale, but it becomes more apparent when academics are asked about specific peers who have pivoted more fully into the sphere of public intellectualism.
Take two interviewees featured on the same series of American Public Radio’s On Being: Sherry Turkle and danah boyd (who prefers that her name not be capitalized) have vastly different reputations within the academic community, prominence, and ways of speaking about their work, though both study the personal side of technology and society. On Being asked each of them to reflect on the way technology has effected our daily lives.
In her interview boyd, a researcher for Microsoft, spoke both as an expert and personally by sharing stories, feelings, and challenges from her life. For these deviations from the typical academic style, boyd is consistently criticized, most vocally on her blog where she often blurs the lines between speaking from experience and speaking from expertise. In a blog post responding to these critiques she justified her decision:
She has also felt the need to justify being paid to do the #SpeakBeautiful Twitter campaign for Dove and Twitter, and clarify other choices she has made about her career.
In contrast Turkle, an MIT professor, has not made any public justifications for her work that I could find. She has published articles in The New York Times and Wired, and written popular books for broad audiences while retaining her credibility as a researcher, professor, and academic. In her On Being interview Turkle is constantly directing questions away from personal or spiritual topics and on to her academic work where she speaks analytically rather than anecdotally. When asked for her ‘origin story’ she relays it in a cool, practiced manner and when asked if she had a wish for the future she responded:
I don’t think its a question of wish. I think it’s really not for us to be wishing, but to be noting.
This distinction is an important one for the respect of the academic community: Turkle is maintaining her academic rhetoric and independence while boyd is approaching the issues holistically as both a part of her identity and as a profitable part of her work, which has caused her to be labeled as a ‘sell out.’ In three individual conversations with academic peers of Turkle and boyd, each one expressed disdain for boyd and described her work as less credible or of lower quality than pure academics.
Anecdotally, it cannot be determined whether these professors discredited boyd’s work because she has pivoted to a more public-facing position, or if it is solely due to the quality of her work. Two of the academics suggested that the reason for her public work is because she was a poor pure academic to begin with. Whichever is the case, it was clear that these peers do not consider boyd’s work to be high quality and it had at least something to do with her public intellectualism.
On paper (i.e. their Wikipedia pages) boyd and Turkle are both interested in similar topics, both work for reputable institutions, and have both written for popular audiences, but one has — to her peers — crossed the line and become more public than intellectual and that is reflected in the quality of her academic work.
Next: The proof is in the TED talks — We prefer the opinions of public intellectuals
