Trust the experts, trust the science

A huge part of my job is thinking about expertise. My academic work is, essentially, writing about the concept of the ‘legal expert’ and how it got to be the way that it is. In presenting that research, I rely on my own credentials as an expert and use other methods (citation, journal placement, long words) to strengthen them. And then of course there’s teaching, which is just performing expertise for a room full or more-or-less eager, more-or-less-drunk children. In general, I am paid to be smart and to look smart.

As a result, I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a person look ‘expert’ and how that changes in different settings. One of perks of being an Official Intellectual is that, at least in some contexts, I can help other people see themselves in that category; if I’m doing it, it’s a thing that a person can do and still be smart/serious. For example, Roman legal historians have recently started the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and they find it fascinating.

smells like expert

This vision of expertise has real consequences, especially for how academic disciplines get to be, act, or look a certain way. One of the reasons why I was drawn to Latin as a teenager is that my Latin teacher was a funny gay guy. Wait, I’m a funny gay guy. Maybe this is a thing funny gay guys are good at?

As it turns out, Mr. Mason was something of an exception. When I got to college and started my Classics major, I encountered self-declared intellectuals who would sometimes tell me that I wasn’t taking my work seriously, because I didn’t act like I was taking it seriously. My performance didn’t really match that of a future expert, and given that none of us were doing anything interesting anyway the performance was all there was to go on. The only reason I ended up in grad school despite that was a particular Latinist at my university—Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer.

Shadi didn’t look or act like any expert I’d ever heard of; she drove fast cars and made jokes and never repeated the same outfit twice. She was fun, and thought Latin literature was fun, and didn’t take herself seriously at all. She is also one of the best Latinists of her generation. Those didn’t actually conflict, since her expertise was based on what she had to say more than on how she acted. I am not like Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, since I am a historian who dresses poorly and can’t drive. But studying with her expanded my notion of how smart people could be in the world, and gave me the sense that I could be myself in the world and still be smart. I’m very grateful for that, and try to pay it forward.

i mean come ON

One of the ways I try to pay it forward is by also being a weird version of an expert. I am very loud for a Classicist, and relatively ethnic; I’m not the only Jew in the discipline, but I’m probably the only one who teaches undergrads that aedile rhymes with bubbele. I get to do that now, and because of my professional position I get to say that anything I do is, by definition, a thing that experts do. That can be a powerful thing for some people to hear.

This account of expertise isn’t new, obviously. Queer theorists have been talking about this expertise problem for basically as long as queer theory has been a thing. But it’s important, and arguably has a lot to do with The Way We Live Now. Our accounts of ‘what experts do’ have widened dramatically in recent years, in ways that make it hard for people to know what an expert is without doing a lot of work. My own version of expertise—how I decide who I trust, on various questions—is credentialist. I trust my doctor on health questions because she went to school and passed a test, I trust the guy who manages my Vanguard account because he works at Vanguard, I trust the things I read in peer-reviewed journals because they’re peer reviewed.

I’ve come up in these systems, and credentialism helps me—as a person with credentials, I would rather live in a world where credentials are valuable. But not everyone is deeply enmeshed in these systems, and people always rely on their scripts for ‘what trustworthy people are like’ in deciding whom to trust. As those scripts expand, the world gets more chaotic. I think you can make a decent case that some of the insane DEI backlash is rooted in a fight over scripts for expertise—I was brought up to think that smart people looked a certain way, and if these people can be smart too how am I supposed to know who to trust? In particular, this fight explains the idea that anyone non-white or non-male must be a ‘fraud.’

Some of those arguments are in bad faith, obviously, but some people really have internalized the idea that experts look and act a certain way and base their evaluation on that look/performance. It’s toxic, but it’s real, and it raises the stakes of Being Smart In Public. I want my students to know that they can be kind of ditzy, and very faggy, and still taken seriously if they produce work that warrants it. That’s real meritocracy, and when I listen to Midnight Sun in my office I am Doing My Part To Democratize The Academy.

What now

I was awarded tenure this summer, and am now an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado-Boulder (appreciate the congrats).

I have a lot of thoughts on this process, mostly warm/fuzzy, but I’m also acutely aware of my privilege—academia is collapsing and TT jobs, let alone tenured positions at schools that take tenure protections seriously, are hard to come by. In these times, then, it’s more important than ever to think about what tenure is for. I have a nice situation and don’t want to waste it. So, what am I supposed to be doing now and why?

One answer, or one of the things that tenure is good for, is that tenured faculty can speak their minds on issues that matter to them. This kind of autonomy is core to the historical notion of the position, and reflects an idea of the academic as a sort of public voice that can speak hard truths.

it me?

Ideally, professors are hard to intimidate because they don’t rely on public approval. It doesn’t matter if my provost hates me, or my governor thinks I’m insane, I get health insurance and a steady paycheck anyway. That allows me to say what I think is right, and to fulfill a slightly different role in public discourse than other kinds of talkers (like politicians or pundits) who operate on a shorter leash.

In practice, things don’t work this way and there are a few reasons for that. First of all, the process of earning tenure—i.e., of doing original research—makes it hard to shoot from the hip. I know what it takes to be speak with confidence about something, because I got to the point where I could speak with confidence about Roman legal history, and I’d have to do all that over again before I felt okay having strong opinions in public. Second, while I’m fine having controversial opinions, I’d rather not be seen as an asshole (note: this does not apply to everyone at Associate level and above, but you knew that already).

Finally, I am—I cannot emphasize this enough—a Roman legal historian. I have very specific expertise that almost never comes in handy, and while I can claim some knowledge of ‘how power justifies itself’ vel sim. based on the more ideological aspects of my work, it’s still all about dead people. I’ve earned the right to speak on a subject most people don’t care about, by developing epistemic habits that make it harder to speak on subjects about which they do.

To be clear, this isn’t a universal problem. I have friends who work primarily on Roman law, who nevertheless fight for what’s right in public; it’s certainly doable. But I’m not temperamentally suited for that version of the academic role, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that American academia selects for people like me.

a better man than i

So then, what am I supposed to be doing? Even if I’m never going to be The Voice of Reason America Needs Right Now, there are things I can say and do now that I couldn’t last year. In particular, I don’t feel the same pressure to be an intellectual that I used to; I’ve earned my stripes and can express myself differently. Because I have written history for specialists, I can write for the public if I want and I can hold myself out as a representative of my discipline with a little less shame. That’s something I’d like to get into, eventually—some of the questions I care about (what does it mean to have an emperor? What does law mean in the real world?) matter to people outside of the academy, and they deserve good books.

The trouble is that they also deserve well-written books. I pride myself on my writing, but everything I’ve written in the last decade has been for academics. For example, I’d be very surprised if anyone without a college degree reads my first monograph. Being a good writer means, among other things, knowing your audience and writing for their needs—I’ve cultivated a certain kind of audience in order to get this position, and it’s not the public.

NOT FOR YOU

It would be thoughtless—disrespectful, kind of shitty—to just assume that I can write in a different register without trying, or that academic prose is ‘harder’ and that I can just adjust a dial to write the easier version. That sells the work short, because public writing is difficult and takes practice. I want to practice it.

This blog is how. I’ll talk about things that matter to me—like academic politics, or The Traitors—because I want to acculturate myself to writing that is less defensive, looser, and more pleasant to read. I will say things on here that I couldn’t have said pretenure, and think through problems I might have been more circumspect about in the past, but I also want to practice different kinds of voice. The public classicists I respect the most—Sarah Bond and Mary Beard are my two big examples, and the people I send friends to for readable work on the ancient world—are blogging queens. They did something right, I assume, so I’ll try the same.

Also recipes. I have these nice, pretty bowls and a photogenic counter: might as well use them.