"Oy Vey! Is It a Crisis or Is It Just Me?"

Abstract

than remember, better time in academe when they are sure that there was not a dismal outlook for the profession and scholars made decisions about their research projects based on integrity and not careerism. The crisis begins with the loss of this Eden, an idyllic place and time characterized by reading, thinking, and the publication of lots and lots of books. Then, meaner, stupider, corporatized, and digitized reality descends upon us all. How can we return to, or create anew, these lost times and values? Patrice Petro places the burden and blame squarely on us (not the publishing industry) by noting loss of standards in professional culture, peer evaluation, and faculty governance. She believes that we must adjudicate our peers' work carefully and rigorously, and stop relying on publishing to make such decisions for us. She argues that rigid hierarchies and outmoded standards for tenure and promotion lead to diminishment of quality and weakening of our professional culture. Similarly, Poster yearns for civic discourse, intellectual conversation, and the exchange of ideas to determine our scholarly projects; in fact, most of these five In Focus essays center on values statements. Are these ideals, which brought and keep most of us in this profession, truly lost? I think not. But as the assembled authors remind us, in these hard times, when the reach of corporate culture extends to all realms, we must be practical, and idealistic as well. We must write well and resist the logic of publish or perish. We must take personal and communal responsibility for protecting what Petro calls the speculative and intellectual thought alive and vital to everything we do. And we must refuse to become what Poster and our most junior colleagues fear: desperate, strategic, and careerist in our publishing practices and elsewhere.