How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment

by Michèle Lamont

Excellence. Originality. Intelligence. Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it? In the academic evaluation system known as “peer review,” highly respected professors pass judgment, usually confidentially, on the work of others. But only those present in the deliberative chambers know exactly what is said. Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world. Anthropologists, political scientists, literary scholars, economists, historians, and philosophers don’t share the same standards. Economists prefer mathematical models, historians favor different kinds of evidence, and philosophers don’t care much if only other philosophers understand them. But when they come together for peer assessment, academics are expected to explain their criteria, respect each other’s expertise, and guard against admiring only work that resembles their own. They must Is the research original and important? Brave, or glib? Timely, or merely trendy? Pro-diversity or interdisciplinary enough? Judging quality isn’t robotically rational; it’s emotional, cognitive, and social, too. Yet most academics’ self-respect is rooted in their ability to analyze complexity and recognize quality, in order to come to the fairest decisions about that elusive god, “excellence.” In How Professors Think, Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.

Genres: Academia, Nonfiction, Sociology, Education, Research, Academic, Anthropology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2009

About the author

Michèle Lamont is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and African and Africa American Studies at Harvard University.

Reviews

[Nat]

It is fun to read social scientists studying your little subculture. In this case, the author did a bunch of interviews with academics serving on interdisciplinary fellowship committees (ACLS, some Ivy League Society of Fellows, Woodrow Wilson, etc.). She got them to try to explain how they go about deciding what proposals get funding.

It turns out that history cleans up in these competitions, in contrast with other disciplines like philosophy and English. That's because (according to the interviews), history has a clear sense of itself as a discipline, with shared criteria of novelty and quality (mainly digging up new facts from an archive). In contrast, while philosophy has a strong sense of its own identity, it is apparently terrible at communicating it to non-philosophers, and absurdly insists that only other philosophers are qualified to judge the merits of a philosophy proposal. That, obviously, is a huge disadvantage for philosophers applying for interdisciplinary grants! English has more or less the opposite problem, where it's very willing to engage with other fields, but it lacks any sense of itself as a discipline and a substantial group of English academics apparently reject the idea of objective criteria of excellence altogether, which also makes it hard for them to argue forcefully for their preferred candidates!

[Lexi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inaptly named. This book is about how humanities and social science professors make judgments about the relative merits of grant applications in a context of disciplinary heterogeneity and a lack of agreed standards for worthwhile scholarship. Quite interesting. Perhaps also useful if you have wistful dreams of ever being awarded funding for academic research.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Believe it or not, this is the best book for my socialization into literary studies XD

[Sharon]

A better title (though less catchy) would be How Academics Think. That's really what this book is about--unless you're a PhD candidate, it's not about your professors. Though they're often the same people, the hat you wear deep in academia and the hat you wear dealing with underclassmen is very different.

The book is rather dry and academic, but I probably would have read it anyway if it had been about professors interacting with undergrads. A better source of insight on that is Rebekah Nathan's "My Freshman Year." Although she was technically researching undergrads, I learned a lot more about her own expectations and prejudices than I did about the students. Another great one on this subject is "I'm the Teacher, You're the Student," in which a professor chronicles a semester teaching undergrads. Both those books were much more interesting to the layman than this one.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is smart and thorough but written in a very accessible style. My recent experience with non-fiction books is that they are either dumbed down for a general audience or written in an obtuse style and so filled with jargon and citations to other works that they are nearly unreadable. This book manages to avoid both problems. Perhaps because she is conscious of her subject matter, the author manages to embody in her own work many of the qualities of academic excellence that she discusses -- clarity, depth, originality, etc.

I was expecting to find a story about ego, cronyism and narrow narcissistic focus of each professor on his or her own field of study. I was pleasantly surprised instead to find a story of smart people trying hard to be collegial, to reach out beyond the boundaries of their own disciplines, to establish and apply meaningful standards and generally to do the right thing. There are checks and balances that discourage excessive ego and infighting. The peer review process is in some ways inherently subjective, but the professors try hard to work around that and generally seem to succeed.

I was pleased to learn that this part of our academic system seems to be in reasonably good shape and to find out that it is an area where America is still a world leader.

One of the things that I found quite interesting was the discussion of how certain fields have lost their way and have experienced a bit of decline --English because the dominance of post-structuralism has dragged the field into a place of self doubt that feels like a bit of a dead end, Philosophy because of obscurity, narrowness of focus and an arrogant attitude that it is superior to other fields, and Cultural Anthropology because the disappearance of primitive societies has caused it to become somewhat unsure as to what it is really about. At the same time, other fields such as History, Economics and Political Science that, rightly or wrongly, have more of a consensus that they are doing important work and that have a broadly agreed methodology, have thrived.

I am the son of a professor. I went to an Ivy League college and assumed that I was destined for an academic career until I decided in my last year of college to go to law school because I did not think I wanted to spend my life with academic people as my colleagues. I have rarely regretted that decision, but this book makes me think that perhaps my youthful judgment of the academic world was a bit too harsh. Even if I would still not want to live in it, I can at least have a renewed respect for it.

[Mckinley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't read this if you are thinking you will learn something about how professors think. Title is a misnomer. This is a very specific book about a study of peer-review in terms of how faculty look at grant proposals and the like to fund, publish, etc. within the structure of academic excellence as percieved by disciplines. I am always leery when terms can't be defined and yet each quote in the book about academic excellence is of the 'I know it when I sees it" variety. Odd also that it didn't include the natural sciences at all. The reviews make this sound and read much more interesting or easy than it is. A good summery conclusion of the study would be very helpful.

[Chris Weatherburn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is my summary of this book which explores the dynamics and thought processes behind professors who sit as panellists for fellowship and research grants. The author is a sociology professor who observed deliberations and interviewed professors trying to decide who to provide these awards to.

Grants and fellowships are becoming increasingly important as academic signals of excellence, especially because the proliferation of journals has made the number of publications of academics a less reliable measure of their status. Of the two, fellowships are considered a better measure of excellence than are grants, because across all the social sciences and the humanities, academics are eager to receive fellowships that allow them to pursue their own research.

Grants, though valuable and customary in the social sciences where research often requires costly data collection, are less important in the humanities.

The benefit to the people who serve on important panels are that they are able to shape things, in terms of who gets accolades. If they agree to select who is defined as excellent, and then they get ensconced in positions in universities to train students of the next generation, and on and on and on.

Those who become linked to the funders themselves gain an insight into how they are going to redefine their own grant applications.

Book suggests the panellists strongly support grant peer review because it is perceived as guaranteeing a relatively clean evaluation process. This attempts to legitimises the system of distribution of resources for evaluators and applicants, and beyond that, affirms the broader system of academic evaluation and promotion.

To some extent peer review is where agreement on quality is accomplished and where the principle of meritocracy is unquestioned. In America as larger the peer review process at times is more robust as people don’t know each other, in smaller countries lots of the panellists will know each other.

A panel will essentially vote for which applications to fund respecting other panellists’ opinions is an essential quality of a good panellist, mentions at times some panellists are intimidated by other panellists so reluctant to speak up. Different disciplines tend to have different behaviours in terms of assessing applications and individual panellists have their own idiosyncratic interests which can mean the votes are not always predictable.

Across all panels, breaches of the rules of deference to expertise and respect of disciplinary sovereignty are the most frequent source of conflict and the most common threat to the maintenance of collegiality. Failure to defer can be deeply troubling to academics because so much of their self-identity is tied to their role as privileged expert.

Mentions some research exploring Gender Bias in social science research and a particular study of peer-reviewed evaluations of postdoctoral research applications that shows reviewers consistently gave female applicants lower average scores than male applicants, despite similar levels of productivity. The book goes onto suggest that more broadly, we know that men’s traits are generally viewed as more valuable than women’s, and that men are generally judged as more competent.

Panellists sometimes suggest limiting fellowships for applicants who have already received them in the past. This is a sensitive issue, in part because track record is read as indicating excellence, and in part because it raises the issue of need. The legitimacy of need, like that of institutional affirmative action, turns on distributive justice, which is a different principle of allocation than that of merit.

The key issue in this debate is whether scholars who have access to many resources should get more, or whether those who have access to very little should be advantaged. If for example a certain well respected person is the proposed supervisor it may provide the panellists confidence that the work will be done even if they have some doubts about it the proposal. In essence this is inside-knowledge which makes an assumption about the role between the supervisor and the student.
Claims regularly made by lower-rank universities for privileging higher-ranked universities are certainly a force for social change.

VLOG summary available: https://youtu.be/Ty_Xz0-fUOE
Feel free to check out my website for more summaries: www.chrisweatherburn.com

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

a book length description of a study of interdisciplinary grant review panels, focusing on humanities and social science awards. primarily descriptive work. i was especially interested in the comparison of epistemological styles across academic disciplines, as well as the social norms concerning evaluation by interdisciplinary committees (in particular, lamont observes that different disciplines have different standards for evaluation and each proposal is evaluated according to the standards of its own discipline, even by scholars from other disciplines--if award panels don't do this the panels break down and cease to function).

i wanted more details about disciplinary epistemological differences, but that wasn't really the main subject of the book. the brief summaries of these differences has definitely piqued my interest and i am looking forward to reading more about comparative epistemological style, especially work that considers STEM fields in addition to the humanities and social sciences

[Övgü Ülgen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book highlights the evaluative culture that enables people to succeed in academia. Lamont states that the object of the book is to understand the norms used to evaluate quality, excellence and significance. She emphasizes that “evaluation is a process that is deeply emotional and interactional.” P.8 For instance, she mentions the effects of customary rules informing interpersonal relationships, especially involving clientalism, and certain extra-cognitive elements such as “gut feelings”, intuition and flair in informing comparative and contextual judgements. She basically argues that “evaluation is impossible without them.” P.19 Contrary to Bourdieu and Merton, she bases her argument on Goffman’s thesis and takes the self and emotions into consideration for peer-review. Humility, coupled with meritocracy, excellence, elegance and cultural capital are evinced as giving one the keys to success in academia. Therefore, the “moral self”, intangible as it is, clearly has a place in her book. Still, I wish there was a more self-reflexive dimension to her work. She stresses her French background and formation before coming to the States, but doesn't go into much detail about her own struggle with evaluative cultures. Her touchstone of 'excellence' stands especially in need of definition.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well conceived and executed study that looked at how professors from different fields assess competitive grant and fellowship proposals and what this reveals about academic judgment. Lamont illustrates clearly how judgment of what is "good" or "worthy" varies greatly across fields. That being said, it felt like her findings were a touch on the obvious side. What she brings with them is clear evidence of what most of us already knew.

[szymborskalyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting inside baseball but really not very deep at all.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

overgeneralized title. More like "a sociologist's observations [and decoding of self-serving interview responses from panelists] re how things work in social sciences fellowship/grant panels for mostly early career awards in interdisciplinary subareas of the social sciences and humanities". Even as a study of "peer review", it's quite limited -- no coverage of the extensive literature on interrater reliability, no consideration of the effects of innovations such as double-blind procedure, no mention of the smaller but striking experimental literature (the late Mike Mahoney's book Scientist as Subject: The Psychological Imperative, published almost 40 years ago, was better informed on those issues).

By her own admission, she "did not aim to establish whether respondents' accounts of their actions corresponded to their observed behavior" (p. 263). Seems like a missed opportunity. Did the blowhard panelist asserting that s/he was evenhanded regardless of whether the applicant came from a prestigious institution show this lack of bias in her/his review scores, or even comments during the meetings you observed? Who knows?

I know it's annoying when people play the "oh, that's just stuff everyone knows anyway" card after reading your work, but I'll go ahead and say........if you've never been on a review panel, I suppose the factual description of how the process works would be informative. But if you have been on one, or just don't care about it, not sure there's much here into which to sink your teeth. Some people are gracious toward disciplines other than their own; some are parochial. Some try to dominate discussion; others are reticent. Some come to meetings well-prepared; others wing it. Some believe in pure objectivity as an ideal; others embrace the proposition that our perceptions of quality are shaped by our own gender/race/class/culture. And so on and so on.

[Sam Grace]

I look forward to reading this because of the Savage Minds review. Here's a chunk:

"It is the best description yet of what we are looking for in proposals for funding dissertation research. For those of us who went to elite school, we have heard this sort of talk about what good proposals look like—it is part of the oral lore that is passed down from one old boy to the next. There are even a few pieces floating out there—Sydel Silverman’s and Adam Przeworski’s—on what funders look for. But this is the longest, most detailed, and most empirical account of what judges in grant competitions look for when they fund grants. You should do yourself a favor and read the whole book, but if nothing else you’d be a fool not to check out chapter five."

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the peer review process, particularly regarding funding. The author observed a number of social science/humanities panels, but her findings should be equally relevant to grad students/postdocs/junior faculty in other disciplines too, since even in the "hard sciences" the people evaluating your proposal are human beings using similar criteria.

As others have commented, the title doesn't fit (at least the part before the colon). Students who want to know how their profs assign grades won't get much out of this book, and those who would want to read this book will not be drawn in by the title.

[Dee Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit more "how professors make decisions in the peer review by committee system" and not so much "how professors think." In that, I was disappointed. I would have preferred a more in depth look at the different disciplines in their own environments and what the professors view as valuable work when they don't have to compromise in a committee. However, it was an interesting look at the peer review/grant funding process.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really outstanding read (at least for someone who works in academics). Really accessible sociological research; sheds light on the politics and decision-making habits of faculty in a number of different humanities and social science disciplines.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A look at peer review and how professors judge each other in terms of academia. Not so much a look at the culture of professors as a look at how they are forced to act in small groups determining the fate of other professors.

[Bruce]

Shows how different various disciplines define "excellence." Any academic who says "I know excellence when I see it" should be embarrassed.

[James Klagge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting for comparing how people in different disciplines view quality. Author interviewed panelists from multidisciplinary grant-making panels in humanities and social sciences.

[Roxani]

Fascinating book about the process of peer review, the formation and evolution of academic disciplines in the social sciences, and the evolving notion of excellence in academia.