public scholarship

Domke argues that scholars have an obligation to make their ideas and findings accessible to the public. I completely agree with this idea, and not just because many universities are funded by taxes. Thinking about this way too abstractly, if ideas and information travel from the World to the University, but not back again, then, for one thing, there's no immediate reason that the integrity of the University's reflection of the World matters. The implication of this is two systems that need not have anything in common, where all of the ideas or laws in one are completely irrelevant in the other. Consider a city and a university in a world where such a scenario exists. The city has long ago stopped sending people to the university or funding it, and the citizens live as though the university doesn't exist; in the university, the dominant theory holds that the city is a fiction created by philosophers who had nothing else to study. Both places can exist autonomously, which is fine, but I am going to make a value judgment and say this situation is bad. Don't contradict me.

Both Domke and Ellison speak about hope. This is directly associated with caring--with being invested in an outcome. Impartiality is traditionally considered the most objective, scientific stance. As we've been talking about in class, however, the scholar is never without bias, so perhaps the most objective position is one of open, authentic subjectivity. This is what I think these authors mean by hope.

In terms of my group's research project, this reading has provided great arguments for why it is important for us to make our results available outside of academia. I am also inclined to be more transparent about my own opinions about all this--still being careful not to let this become an excuse not to do authentic research. That is--and maybe I should really have emphasized this above--it's important to acknowledge one's subjectivity while still striving toward impartial research methods!