14 Things to Do Before You Retire

7. Become a Public Intellectual. Write a column for The Chronicle or an opinion essay for a major paper saying what you really think about something controversial, even if you have to risk burning some bridges in the process. One well-read column can have more impact than years of obscure scholarship. Or work in some new publication venue, like a blog, that has little professional respectability and the potential to revolutionize academic discourse. Support the colleagues who are taking those risks to reach a wider audience. —“Thomas H. Benton”14 Things to Do Before You Retire (Chronicle)

Kudos to the pseudonymous Benton for bringing up this subject.

It is rather sad, though, that he feels “1. Get Tenure” is a prerequisite for everything else on the list.

4 thoughts on “14 Things to Do Before You Retire

  1. Dennis: Wendell Berry is an excellent example of Gramsci’s organic intellectual. I appreciate his Christian spirituality as well as profound reflections on the nature of American society. He may be a Luddite, but he makes some good observations. Hope your semester is going well, Eric

  2. Dennis: I think your points are well-taken. Your students explore their daily lives through their blogging and waiting until one is a tenured scholar before commencing research on blogs would prevent any of us from doing academic research on the field. I was reminded of Gramsci’s concept of the “organic intellectual” which I mention in the introduction to my dissertation. To be consciously involved with your research makes academic labor relevant to the democratic goals of education. As you say being “personally attached to the medium of weblogging and the culture that has formed around it.” Blogging empowers the writer and creates a network of correspondents who share common perspectives.

  3. I’m reacting mostly to his reference to 20 years of delayed gratification. I started reading some of my favorite academic blogs when the bloggers were grad students, and I drank in their deep and honest reaction to the theories they were encountering, during a time in my life when I was adjusting to my teaching load (and therefore didn’t have much time to explore scholarship). Had these bloggers heeded Benton’s advice and held off on their blogging until they were tenured, there would not be a critical mass of experienced, digitally-native bloggers who are doing scholarship on academic blogging. We would instead have only the experiences of the tenured professors who sample blogging in the classroom to see what it is like, but who don’t themselves feel personally attached to the medium of weblogging and the culture that has formed around it.

  4. “It is rather sad, though, that he feels “1. Get Tenure” is a prerequisite for everything else on the list.” — DGJ

    Why? Do you think “Benton” is saying one can’t blog or write controversial opinion columns until they’ve acquired the academic freedoms that come with tenure? (Of course, that’s poppycock… but Benton’s only encouraging the newly-tenured to express their sanctioned academic freedom and explore it. So I don’t see that as sad, but rather as optimistic in many ways). Moreover, having tenure only gives your blogs and articles all the more authority, no?

    Or are you just saying it’s a ‘rather sad’ comment on the obsession with tenure by new PhDs in academe today?

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