Academic vs. Public Writing

We don't have to choose between them, but we do have to know our target audiences and be aware of the political stakes.

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Academic writing often gets a bad rap outside of the ivory tower for being difficult to understand, dense, and lacking the flair of more popular forms of writing. Some academics even take pride in writing in this style and are unconcerned with audiences outside of their field. Other academics value writing that can reach broader audiences. In contemporary academic circles, there is a perceived schism between those who tout accessible writing and those who think “accessible” means less intellectual.

I would argue that both writing styles have a place and that we do not have to choose between them; rather, we need to figure out who our audiences are in order to determine which style is best for them. Some people place a higher value on the public dissemination of important scholarly insights, whereas others believe that academic writing in its traditional opaque style is better suited to advancing knowledge production among other scholars in their field. At the same time, there are political aspects to writing for academic or public audiences that must be navigated.

Today I will look at the politics and affordances of these two broad categories of writing, and an upcoming newsletter will go into greater detail about what public writing entails in a more "how-to" post.

Why Write in Difficult, Jargon-Infested Prose?

Traditional forms of academic writing are designed with a very specific audience in mind: other scholars in your discipline and sub-field. We work as a scholarly collective to broaden the horizons of knowledge about the topics we study by citing previous conversations in the literature and connecting our ideas to theirs using specialized language. The majority of this research has been published in journal articles that are paywalled and only available through university libraries. As I have also written before,

Journal articles require me to fit a lot of big ideas into a small number of words, so my sentences have to be economical, which means I end up with more jargon and academic language because those words can hold more precise meaning. This is my least favorite writing style because I often don't have enough space to use more descriptive or storytelling language, but it is a good way to get complex ideas out into the [academic] world.

Thus, by using a specialized vocabulary, academic writing ensures that ideas are communicated to a specialized audience with the utmost clarity and accuracy. Scholars can engage in nuanced discussions and effectively convey complex concepts that would otherwise be lost in more casual forms of communication because of this precision.

Academic Writing and Its Discontents

Michael Warner discusses the politics of academic and public writing in his book, Publics and Counterpublics. He cites Judith Butler (who cites Adorno) as arguing that public writing often uses common sense to speak to general audiences because it uses a language that everyone understands. Yet,

the apparent clarity of common sense is corrupt with ideology and can only be countered by defamiliarization in thought and language. The task of the intellectual is to disclose all the forms of distortion, error, and dominance that have been embedded in the current version of common sense (p. 132).

Accordingly, much scholarly work shares the goal of using unusual language to analyze the world in order to avoid common ideological traps. Warner declares,

Language that takes us outside the usual frame of reference, teaching us to see or think in new ways, can be a necessary means to a more just world (p. 132-133).

He goes on to say that academics who are most chastised for using dense or difficult language are frequently the most left-wing and have ideas that run counter to common sense, which tends to skew conservative. As a result, academics are often critiqued not just for their style of language but also for the content of their language.

One obvious criticism of Warner's arguments is that if scholarship is meant to challenge the status quo of knowledge and common sense, what good is it to speak only to other academics who are accustomed to doing so?

But I digress for now.

In my assessment, academic writing speaks to very specific audiences, i.e., other scholars, and I believe that it’s important to have those conversations with one another so we can push human knowledge production forward. The key is to understand when to speak to that audience and when to speak to different audiences, why, and what is at stake politically.

Writing Public Scholarship

I frequently meet other academics who want to write for audiences outside of academia for the same reasons that Butler and Warner mention. So much of what circulates in public discourse is based on common sense, which may or may not reflect recent scientific discoveries or novel humanistic analyses of the cultural world. Scholars want to write for public audiences to disseminate their work and best ideas to the world and influence common sense rather than cater to it. They do not want their work to be locked behind paywalls or buried in jargon.

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In its most idealistic form, publicly engaged writing has the potential to bridge the ivory tower and actively address societal challenges. We can make a tangible impact by disseminating knowledge, engaging communities, and advocating for evidence-based policies, ensuring that their research has real-world relevance and promotes positive social change. We can make a direct contribution to policy discussions, educate the public, and inspire positive change.

But, as journalist Nicolas Kristof famously reprimanded our entire profession,

Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.

Kristof’s words met criticism in academic circles, but he also accurately described some of the structural challenges we face when writing publicly:

A basic challenge is that Ph.D. programs have fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience. This culture of exclusivity is then transmitted to the next generation through the publish-or-perish tenure process. Rebels are too often crushed or driven away.

The obvious barrier for academics who want to write publicly is that most institutions prefer paywalled journal articles to think pieces in The Guardian. The metrics used to determine tenure-track job offers, tenure, and promotion all favor writing for other academics over writing for the general public. This frequently means that scholars who write publicly do so in addition to writing for institutional advancement metrics.

I agree with Kristof that we both have a societal obligation to write publicly and that our institutions are the biggest impediment to doing so. Ironically, most universities take pride in the fact that their faculty are featured on the BBC or write articles for the New York Times. This raises the institution's profile, which is beneficial to their overall reputation. However, scholars’ efforts to share knowledge broadly don’t align with the ways we get and keep jobs at most academic institutions. Instead, it is usually up to individuals to value public scholarship enough to put in the extra effort of producing it on top of the work that our institutions value.

Meanwhile, our universities continue to promote Professor Public Scholar's appearance on TV via their social media channels.

So How Do We Navigate Our Ideals with These Structures?

If you have been reading Publish Not Perish for a while, you will know that much of my writing is motivated by a desire to make structures transparent while also providing strategies for navigating them. Of course, offering strategies for challenging structures might do more to facilitate broader change, but I believe it is also important to have spaces that provide people with ways to deal with their current contexts.

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If you value publicly engaged work, you must consider your institution's stance on the issue, but you do not have to give up your values and bend to the system. If you are pre-tenure at a research-focused institution, you may not be able to do as much public-facing work as you would like, but I would still encourage you to do some because that is what you find fulfilling about your work.

And no, I don’t think the advice to wait to be a public scholar until you are tenured is good for everyone. For some of us, that advice steals our souls. Instead, understand the structural constraints of your choices, but guard the things you value most in this career.

Read this piece to learn more about how to navigate institutional constraints while doing what brings you fulfillment. After all,

Our institutions are unlikely to give us more time to do the work we most value or a life outside of work, so we have to take it back for ourselves.

Want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of how to write publicly? Stay tuned for a couple upcoming “how-to” posts.