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Why I’m Making People Rewrite their Dissertations
A defense of academic modesty
I’ve been on a bunch of dissertation committees lately, where I’m finding myself to be the tough guy—the last holdout refusing to approve the document. It’s a weird feeling because I don’t really consider myself an academic, much less a rigorous one. I do know some stuff, I wrote a dissertation, I have a PhD, and I’m even a “full” professor at a real university. But I’ve always seen myself as more of a writer, thinker, or even artist than a full-fledged professional scholar. (And I have plenty of colleagues who like to remind me that they feel the same way about me and my oeuvre!)
Yet when I am on a dissertation committee, I find myself filled with a sense of commitment to the project of humanity’s collective scholarship. There is something special about academic writing, precisely because it is academic. It is not “professional” writing in the sense that it does not have to be commercial or acceptable to our emotional sensibilities, the political climate, or the marketplace. It just has to be supported. And rigorous. That’s the whole point of this genre of writing, or discipline of study. Because it’s “only” academic, it is both free to tell the truth and obligated to tell the truth as far as we know it.
