Below the Salt: Academic Work in the 21st Century
In medieval times to sit above the salt was a place of honor. The saltcellar was in the middle of the table. Persons of distinction sat above the salt, closer to the lord and lady of the house. Lowlifes sat below it; they were people of low social position.
Professor Smith, of the University of Paris, clearly fancies that he sits above the academic salt. In his recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-moral-contortions-of-the-new-university?cid=gen_sign_in he is equally clear about who sits below the academic salt. He takes Professor Matthew Mayhew of The Ohio State University to task for some op-eds https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/09/29/author-apologizes-inside-higher-ed-article-he-recently-wrote-opinionhe has written, and opines that “Mayhew is someone with whom I would have absolutely nothing to talk about if, by some unlikely twist of fate, I were seated next to him at some rubber-chicken-and-ice-water teaching-awards dinner.” Poor Smith! Poor Mayhew!
Smith’s poo-poohing of Mayhew has less to do with a disagreement about an op-ed or two, than for what the pitiable fellow studies — largely, applied, quantitative studies of higher education. It’s not only the unfortunate Mayhew who must be assigned to sit below the academic salt — all of us who undertake applied research appear unlikely to get to sit with Smith and his confreres. Smith shows us his intellectual bona fides and says he could be a fun table guest for numerous individuals. If I studied “Antarctic ice-core paleontology or Jane Austen” then Smith is the dinner partner for me. People like Mayhew who study stuff like How College Affects Students is simply too much.
Aside from the snootiness of the op-ed, and the ad-hominem attack on Mayhew, Smith’s vision of higher education is one that is outmoded on two counts.
First, Smith’s paradise lost — the good old days — were not so great for people of color, women, those who were disabled, the LGBTQ community, and the poor. We were not simply below the salt; we weren’t even at the table. The changes that Smith laments are precisely changes that have opened up academe. Ironically, as the academy has opened up its intellectual doors to a wider swath of humanity, the sorts of texts that Mayhew writes are a critical contribution to understanding how to improve our teaching and research, especially for these historically uninvited student populations.
Second, Smith seems unaware that paradigms have shifted. Donald Stokes, for example, has quite a different take from Smith. In Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Stokes rejected the dichotomy between basic and applied research, which tended to privilege the basic scientist. Smith wants to maintain that privilege, and put the rest of us below the salt.
Stokes posited research as lying in four quadrants — all viable, all important, and, critically for my commentary here, all relying on different criteria to conduct and evaluate research. The first quadrant pertains to basic researchers who are trying to understand phenomena without concern or focus on external influences or the application of their work. Niehls Bohr, who spent much of his career mapping the structure of atoms, is a useful example of the scholar doing research in this quadrant. Smith would have a lot to talk about with the individuals in this quadrant.
The second quadrant is where applied research gets conducted. Thomas Edison, who was more concerned with practical applied discovery than Bohr, is the example here. These are the sorts of researchers who are concerned with innovation, and to a certain degree, entrepreneurial action. The third quadrant is unnamed but largely has to do with taxonomic research, whereby the researcher is trying to classify particular phenomena. Audubon’s work in classifying birds is the typical example here. Those who have created encyclopedias and have tried to systemize knowledge from a neutral perspective are another example.
The fourth quadrant, known as Pasteur’s quadrant, is the one that I want to concentrate on here. Louis Pasteur’s research in microbiology is neither applied nor basic, and it is certainly not taxonomic. As Stokes (1997) notes, Pasteur’s focus “was a commitment to understand the microbiological processes he discovered and a commitment to control the effects of these processes on humans” (p. 72). Stokes defines this sort of research as “use-inspired basic research” (p. 84). This form of research utilizes basic research and social existence and is in constant motion back and forth between the two. Knowledge is not linear from theory to application but instead it is bidirectional and dynamic, calling into question the long-held Enlightenment ideal that only pure research produces understanding that furthers the human condition (Tierney & Holley, 2008).
Such research enables us to think about a university that has a diverse view of knowledge, rather than as a singular concept that adheres to a singular framework advocated by Professor Smith. The analysis not only enables the academy to move away from the dichotomy of basic/applied, but also creates one that makes a distinction between hard and soft research, or high status and low status fields (aka, above and below the salt).
A variety of changes occur when we reorient the university from a research model in an intellectual straitjacket and instead move toward multiple ways to understand and advance knowledge. We open up the academy so previously excluded groups are able to participate. Translational research gains credence because there’s a desire to make our work known to a wider group than those who simply deserve to sit with us at our dinner table.
One’s peers remain critical in the evaluation of work, but the potential users of the findings of research, and those implicated by it, also become involved. Indeed, at a time of a global pandemic Pasteur’s Quadrant has become a logical place to conduct one’s work. Further, issues of race are not necessarily useful to be undertaken without cross-cutting research that is also translational and falls outside the traditional paradigm.
In suggesting this form of work, I am consciously calling into question the traditional structures of knowledge that have defined the twentieth-century academy and that Professor Smith seems so wedded to in his attack on Professor Mayhew. The reward structure, how we decide what is useful, interesting, important, and iterative, all gets rethought. The model is not substitutive but expansive. It calls for defining the reward structure and lessening our fascination with rankings and easy comparisons. Such a framework goes a long way to enabling the university to be more involved in a manner required during a time of social transformation and when the fabric of democracy is under attack. Isn’t it time to go on a no-salt diet and expand the table rather than cordon it off the way Smith desires?
William G. Tierney is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California and author of Get Real: 49 Challenges Confronting Higher Education (SUNY).
