Doubt and Disillusionment
I am just nearing the end of my second week as a Fulbright Scholar, based at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. My hosts have been nothing short of amazing, speaking to me and around me in perfect English, offering advice on the city and how to do things here, and providing me space and time to read, write, and think every day. I have begun to build the foundation of my research project, am getting a sense of the issues at stake and the challenges in the space, and have a rough plan of action for how to accomplish something in the simultaneously scant and expansive five months in front of me.
Its not very often that negativity creeps into my work life. I enjoy what I do and I try hard to be diligent. But so far there has been a light grey cloud of doubt floating over me. I assume its an extension of that imposter syndrome I wrote about a few weeks ago, which I had hoped would shake off once I began my work. It hit home when, in the midst of some reading about open science policy, I paused and wrote, “are the public even calling for open research at all? Or do we do this to make ourselves feel better about our distance from real life?”
This doubt is deeper than just me; its an existential doubt about the purpose of ‘open scholarship’ in the lived experiences of most people around the globe. On the way to the library, I ride my bike past shopkeepers, bakers, sanitation workers, tourists, Germans, Russians, Saudis, Brits, teenagers, elderly, skateboarders, mothers, fashionistas, workers, laborers, and teachers. I am here to research how/why policy and technology infrastructure around open science seems to happen quickly and filter down effectively in the EU and member states. And yet, my wandering wondering mostly comes down to — who cares?
This summer I really enjoyed reading the novel Jayber Crow by Wendell Barry. Early in the book, setting up the reminder of the story, Jayber decides to leave University and return to small town life as a barber. His (and Barry’s) short commentary on the role of the university in public life has echoed around my head for months.
“The university was trying to be the world of the future, and maybe it has had a good deal to do with the world as it has turned out to be, but this has not been as big an improvement as the university expected. The university thought of itself as a a place of freedom for thought and study and experimentation, and maybe it was, in a way. But it was an island too, a floating or a flying island. It was preparing people from the world of the past for the world of the future, and what was missing was the world of the present, where every body was living its small, short, surprising, miserable, wonderful, blessed, damaged, only life.” — From Jayber Crow
As I continue this work, which feel compelled to do and believe wholeheartedly in, I know that doubt and disillusionment are par for the course. There is not a clear line between the privilege I enjoy, to leave a well-paid position at NC State for 5 months on a government-subsidized trip to Europe and then return to that same position, and this vast unknowable, oft-cited, not-oft sighted, “PUBLIC.”
I was encouraged by spending some time reading and annotating a recent article, Do universities reward the public dimensions of faculty work? An analysis of review, promotion, and tenure documents. (I know, sounds thrilling, right?!) Being that I’m doing my best to work “in the open”, I discovered that a group of students in a course called Making Knowledge Public were also reading and annotating the article online, so I drove headfirst into their discussion. AliceLF, seemingly reading my mind across time and geography, asked, “What does the public actually want from the academic community? Has anyone actually asked?”
My reply to her comment was one of those moments where my writing transformed what I had been thinking. I wrote, “I find it most helpful to think of my public — my brother, a firefighter turned salesman, my sisters, an accountant and a pre-school teacher, and my dad, retired Air Force armchair genealogist.” What do they want/need from my thinky pain in the ivory tower?” My hope is that doing this project for my public will ground it in the world of the present, and in the lived experience of those I know and love, and those repercussions will make an impact and meaning far beyond my small duty of care.
