At 09:43 AM 5/18/2006, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>On 5/18/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>> >That raises questions: Is it fair to look into what gets published by
>> >Z Magazine, AK Press, etc. and hold it up to exactly the same standard
>> >as what gets published in scholarly journals and university presses?
>> >Is it common for professors to get investigated for "academic
>> >misconduct" on account of what they published for non-scholarly
>> >audiences?
>>
>>Shouldn't you be careful about saying things like this now that you
>>have a position with Monthly Review? And aren't you encouraging
>>people to treat the output of radical presses less seriously?
>
>It's a very rare university to hire a left-wing scholar, let alone
>award tenure to him, based on what he published in Z Magazine or even
>Monthly Review. Publications in left-wing venues are normally not
>considered as part of academic work. Even _peer-reviewed_ scholarly
>left-wing journals -- e.g., New Political Science -- aren't regarded
>as relevant as non-left-wing peer-reviewed journals. Since left-wing
>publications aren't included in the credit column of academic
>advancement, I wonder why they suddenly are included in the debit
>column. (It's possible that, in Ward Churchill's case, an exception
>has been made for him and his work for the general audience has been
>accepted as the main part of consideration in hiring and promotion.
>If the school hired him for being an activist and public intellectual,
>rather than a standard-issue academic, though, why change the criteria
>of recognition now?)
>
>Also, different genres and venues of writing come with different
>standards -- authors, editors, and readers all understand that. What
>you are entitled to say in a sharp political polemic isn't necessarily
>an appropriate thing to publish in a scholarly journal -- e.g., take
>the editors of Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah:
>
><blockquote>Now that the "uncorrected pages" of Beyond Chutzpah are
>being sent out to reviewers, it's possible to see what Finkelstein's
>book actually says. (Disclosure: A senior editor of The Nation served
>as a freelance editor of Beyond Chutzpah.) The claim that Dershowitz
>didn't write The Case for Israel has been removed--the UC Press
>explained in a statement accompanying review copies that "Professor
>Finkelstein's only claim on the issue was speculative. He wondered why
>Alan Dershowitz, in recorded appearances after his book was published,
>seemed to know so little about the contents of his own book. We felt
>this weakened the argument and distracted from the central issues of
>the book. Finkelstein agreed." (Jon Wiener, "Giving Chutzpah New
>Meaning," The Nation, 11 July 2005,
><http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050711&s=wiener>)</blockquote>
>
>On the other hand, if you look into all the evidence, research
>methods, logic of argument, etc., etc., what's in scholarly journals
>and university presses may very well be less accurate, not to mention
>less truthful, over all than what's in general publications for the
>audience on the left. It would be interesting to look into that, but
>I don't have the time to do it now.
>--
>Yoshie
><http://montages.blogspot.com/>
><http://mrzine.org>
><http://monthlyreview.org/>
>
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>
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