MLA Report A

Thoughts on reading the Report from the "MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion":

Good ideas buried and blunted in a document that reads very much like something that came out of an institutional committee. I have a lot of respect for John Guillory, both personally and professionally (especially since sitting under him at a Folger seminar a couple of years ago and after hearing him make an appeal along these same lines at MLA 2004), and I have appreciated Berube's words about the committee's intentions. I neither know nor have read anything by the other members of the committee. I believe they tried to do the right thing. Still, the firecrackers in here are pretty much smothered by committee-eese.

The most important things to come out of this report, in my mind:
1. Reevaluating the relative value of the monograph versus the article
2. Attempting to accommodate scholarly work in multiple formats and venues
3. Removing the amorphous "collegiality" criterion for tenure--a notion ripe for abuse, as several recent cases can attest
4. A reevaluation of the shape and purpose of the dissertation (i.e., perhaps everyone's not writing an embryonic monograph. see: Piers.)

This last point would have multiple ramifications, especially in tandem with the first point.

The problem, and the authors of the report somewhat lamely gesture toward it, is that the only way reform can take place is if top-level institutions (Ivy League schools, the top state institutions) adopt the recommendations. But I'm not sure what their incentive is, since current practices have served and continue to serve them quite well. If Berkeley or Harvard refuses to engage reform, then there's certainly no incentive for UNC or Duke to do so, and if they don't, then the UT system, where I work, certainly won't.

Points 19 and 20 in the summary recommendations say things like "The task force encourages discussion of. . . " and "Departments should undertake a comprehensive review. . . " Wow, calm down there, folks. Don't want to get too overheated! I recognize the report for what it is: it has multiple audiences, and certainly the priorities at this institution (where I work) are not and should not be the same as those at Indiana or Stanford. Still, reform is by its very nature hard to get going.

And since I left my annotated copy of the report at home, I'll have to close with this. To those of you who could not possibly care less about what the MLA does or doesn't say, my apologies. Carry on.