by Jon Lackman | 4 May 2009 | Awards, Books
Sociologist Michèle Lamont’s new book is How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. She “observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length.” She shows how “judging quality isn’t robotically rational; it’s emotional, cognitive, and social too,” particularly when academics serving on multi-disciplinary panels are forced to evaluate proposals outside their own fields. In one section, she notes that
During interviews, multiple examples of how panelists’ idiosyncratic interests shape their votes emerged. A panelist … confesses (without flinching), “The one on dance [I liked a lot]; I’m an avid dance person” … Similarly, an anthropologist explains her support for a proposal on songbirds by noting that she had just come back from Tucson, where she had been charmed by songbirds. An English scholar supports a proposal on the body, tying her interest to the fact that she was an elite tennis player in high school … Yet another panelist ties her opposition to a proposal on Viagra to the fact that she is a lesbian … “I’m so sick of hearing about Viagra.”
Startling New Study Uncovers People Like Stuff They Like.
The motto of my Web site, “Resources in Art History for Graduate Students” (www.efn.org/~acd/resources.html) is “You might as well apply for everything because who gets what is totally arbitrary…” From a pretty famous art historian–not, btw, Erwin Panofsky.