Eric Anthony Grollman is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Indiana University.  Eric’s research primarily focuses on the health consequences of discrimination, with attention to the health and well-being of women, LGBT people, and people of colour more generally.  Through his blogging on his own website and for Kinsey Confidential, Eric aims to make academic research and knowledge publicly accessible.  In this week’s guest post, Eric encourages fellow scholars to consider blogging as a source of intellectual activism.

To blog or not to blog?  Within the context of the debate over public sociology, which seems as old as the discipline itself, the question does not seem that novel. But, with technology advancing even as I write this, the question does warrant attention.

Still today, much academic knowledge, be it publications or lecture material, is locked within the academy. Individuals who can afford it are welcomed into institutions of higher education to learn basic aspects of any discipline of their choosing. Their student status allows them to peruse whatever academic journals to which their university has purchased access. But, beyond the university, the public has limited access to academic knowledge. And, even those who can access it, like our students, there is little hope (and utility) of gleaning much from the latest issue of American Sociological Review.  Even Contexts articles are behind pay-walls!

On Activism and the Academy

I have wrestled with the ivory tower’s barriers to academic knowledge since the start of my graduate training in 2007. Like most of my colleagues of marginalized backgrounds, particularly scholars of color, I came to graduate school as an activist, prepared to devote my life to making a difference. Still today, I am often frustrated by my naiveté that the academy, by design, is apolitical and “objective.”  The first time it was made painfully aware to me, a professor joked, “oh, we still haven’t beaten the activist out of you yet?”  No, they still have not.

Unsurprisingly, the value-systems of many academic institutions (particularly research-intensive universities) reflect and reinforce this apolitical and supposedly objective culture. One’s job prospects, tenure-ability, and chances of promotion depend, first, upon one’s research in peer-reviewed journals; then, some attention is paid to the quality of one’s teaching. Finally, one’s service to the department, university, and discipline are given a quick skim. Of course, service never means serving communities in need. (That is what you do in your “free” time.)

Unfortunately, these institutional priorities mirror those of white, middle-class scholars. I suspected this from the start of my academic career. But, I had my “proof” when I saw the ASA presentation, “‘Diversity and Its Discontents’: A Report on Graduate Student Experiences in PhD-Granting Institutions” (see the Powerpoint here).  In a 2009 sample of 1,473 doctoral students, African American and Latina/o doctoral students ranked as their number 1 and number 3 reason to attend graduate school, respectively, to “contribute to the advancement of minorities in the US”; “contribute to my community” was number 2 for Latina/os. The top three reasons for white doctoral students were to “grow intellectually,” “improve occupational mobility,” and “make a contribution to the field.”  All these years of feeling my work was urgently needed to make a difference, while my white colleagues were merely curious about the social world, now had confirmation.

Top 3 Reasons Students go to Grad School

Intellectual Activism

Recently, I have grown more comfortable in accepting that I pursue change-making through my research, teaching, and academic and community service, and that I do so in an environment that tries to “beat the activist” out of me.  I have been particularly inspired by Patricia Hill Collins’s latest book, Intellectual Activism, which makes such work seem like a given for scholars of color.

Collins makes a distinction between speaking truth to power and speaking truth to the people. Indeed, by pursuing traditional academic work, namely publishing research, we aim to accomplish the former. That is, we try to advance research, and even challenge others’ research, to better understand social problems, make visible the lives of historically marginalized communities, and so on. But, such efforts alone could mean that your work never leaves the pay-walls of academic journals. Instead, to do so, we must speak to (and with) those outside of the ivory tower (e.g., public speeches, working with community groups).  (See her Contexts article on these ideas, as well).

The importance of both of these intellectual activist efforts became very clear to me with the publication of my first solo-authored article in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Understandably, I was excited upon news of its acceptance. But, from acceptance to OnlineFirst to print and beyond, I kept feeling that something was missing. In fact, I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I was underwhelmed. Here, I had achieved the great feat of publishing in one of the discipline’s top journals, and ended up feeling more irrelevant thereafter. Getting somewhat choked up in revealing this to a few friends, I realized I was aching for some sense that my publication would actually matter to the people it was about – marginalized individuals who face discrimination and bear the health consequences of these experiences.

I suspect I will eventually be cited, as many scholars are doing important, novel work on discrimination and health. But, beyond those JHSB articles featured as policy briefs, few outside of the academy will ever see my article. Whereas capturing the media’s attention for one’s research seemed to be the common route to accessibility, I pursued a press release through Indiana University and one through ASA. I am grateful for these opportunities, but, again, disappointed by the outcome. A few sites that indiscriminately repost every academic article picked up the press releases. And, my study was featured in a few Spanish-language newspapers in Los Angeles.  No small feat!  But, it was not the New York Times attention of which I dreamed.

I considered sending printed copies of my article to non-profit organizations like NAACP, NOW, and HRC. But, I worried that their overworked staff had little time to figure out what to do with it. Ultimately, I decided to devote a guest blog post at Sociological Images to a summary of my article, which I also posted on my own personal blog.

Blogging as Intellectual Activism

Blogging – a form of writing on the internet (short for web-logging) – can serve many academic functions. In fact, at least in the way I approach blogging, it offers a unique space to simultaneously achieve efforts related to research, teaching, and service.  Again, using the example of my JHSB article, I was able to make my findings accessible beyond the JHSB readership (i.e. academics). In addition, it offered an unlimited space to elaborate or clarify. In particular, I was able to strip away much of the sociological jargon that likely hinders readability. In addition, I was able to offer simple bar graphs instead of multivariate models. While expounding upon my research, I also spent some energy to teaching an unfamiliar audience about some of the concepts within my article, namely the intersectionality theoretical framework.

In addition to extending traditional academic work, blogging also presents a space for more “real time” scholarship. One of the constraints of academic work is the lag in doing research to publication to uptake beyond the academy. Years may go by before one sees one’s first citation, and even more before one’s study has some impact, albeit indirect, beyond the ivory tower. As such, sociologists rarely attend to current events in their research.  Though one might find it challenging to pursue, for example, an ethnographic study of the Trayvon Martin murder case, one certainly could devote a five-paragraph blog assessment of the racial dynamics inherent within it. With so much political commentary offered for everyday current events, we certainly could use more sociologically-informed, critical perspectives to make sense of things.

Personal Benefits of Blogging

You may not be convinced by these aforementioned reasons to blog – that it offers a space to make your research and academic knowledge in general accessible to the public. Indeed, there is still little institutional value and support for such work. However, there are other benefits, both personal and professional, that may make blogging more enticing.

Professionally, blogging can serve as an opportunity to connect with other scholars. Though I am physically (and socially) isolated these days as I frantically finish my dissertation, I have been a part of an on-going blog discussion with Fabio Rojas (orgtheory.net), Tressie Cottom McMillan (tressiemc.com), and Jason Orne (queermetropolis.wordpress.com) about the persistence of racism in America, or the possibility that we are in living in a “post-racist” era. In addition, blogging can function as a space to mentor other scholars, or simply offer professional advice. Tanya Golash-Boza (SREM Section Chair) has a great blog (getalifephd.blogspot.com) that is filled with tips for writing and creating balancing in one’s schedule (and life in general). Karen Kelsky’s theprofessorisin.com was tremendously helpful for preparing for the job market.

Following the aforementioned blog debate on “post-racism,” I have also been reminded that blogging has a bit of a liberating effect. Of course, any additional writing tasks are good practice. But, blogging offers a space to write without censor, standard, and fear of “what will the reviewers think!”  Early on, I learned that my academic writing must be undeniably supported by prior research or my own findings. One cannot discuss what they are not measuring directly; “don’t talk about racism – you’re measuring race attitudes,” I was told. In my personal blogging, I can talk about racism – and I often do. As a result, the words flow more easily. I do not stop after each sentence to agonize over what reviewer number 2 will say. And, this newfound ease in my writing extends into my academic writing, as well (even on “perceived” race discrimination in my work on racist discrimination).

Obviously, every sociologists cannot blog, for it may not be a desirable task to add to those overwhelming To-Do lists that actually lead to jobs, tenure, and promotion.  But, I would at least like to encourage those who have been curious or tempted to consider it, even if infrequently or offering a guest blog post to existing blog sites.  There are numerous free blogging sites (e.g., WordPress, Blogspot).  Whether you blog for change, or just for a change of pace, the benefits of doing so may be worth giving up a few minutes to an hour.

References

Collins, Patricia Hill. 2012. On Intellectual Activism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Segura, Denise A. 2012. “‘Diversity and Its Discontents’: A Report on Graduate Student Experiences in PhD-Granting Institutions.”  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 17, Denver, CO.