Michele Lamont Reveals How Professors Think—and Why?

Saying “You don’t select people as much as you deselect them,” Lamont recognizes that groups such as admission or peer review committees deal with a large volume of highly qualified applicants who must be eliminated based on particular criteria, whether that criteria be quantitative (test scores), subjective (the “elegance” of writing in a proposal), or moral (recommendation letters or testimonies to character). Different criteria become more “salient” in different situations, exacerbating the potential subjectivity of the process.

In her research, Lamont observed five different funding competitions for the Social Science Research Council and American Council for Learned Society. She conducted interviews with more than 80 program officers in charge of administering funds for academic research. The application process and standards varied across competitions, but Lamont’s discoveries can still be generalized to the peer review process in general.

Lamont found a distinct variation in how much emphasis was placed on “demonstrations of expertise vs. what one might define as ‘what’s exciting’” in a particular field. A divide exists between funding in more interpretive disciplines like anthropology and English as opposed to more rules-based disciplines like political science and economics, which involve standardized forms of judgment. In interpretive disciplines, committee members “think they’re there because of their taste,” whereas more standardized disciplines feel they’re there to judge by specific criteria. Lamont found that with “a good proposal that’s boring vs. an exciting one that’s not so good,” economists and political scientists would be more likely to go for the first proposal, whereas more taste-based committees might fund the more exciting research.

Perhaps most the prominent outcome of Lamont’s research was her desire to shift perceptions of the role of emotions and individuality in the selection process. Previously, emotions and subjective criteria were seen as corrupting. Lamont found that “it’s not corrupting, it’s intrinsic” to the process. As long as evaluators are aware of individual bias and unique perspectives, these factors may actually lend value to the process.

In contrast to Mark Taylor’s recent call to end the university as we know it, Lamont finds a fundamental value in the different viewpoints espoused by different departments. Where Taylor sees a need for a standardized cross-disciplinary cooperation that would bring everyone on the same page, Lamont takes a more pluralistic view, valuing the different lights that different disciplines shine on reality. Somewhat ironically, these different lights—described rather more damningly by Taylor as "limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems"—are exactly what constitute the (perhaps overly) subjective nature of peer review committees.

"Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors," Taylor charges, and indeed Lamont's findings may support the idea that professors are more likely to respond enthusiastically to proposals in their own area of interest than in another specialization. Still, Lamont finds Taylor’s suggestions fundamentally "dismissive of academia," and says his article presents academics as self-serving people. Lamont notes that “tenure might seem like a huge luxury but outside teaching, we spend a lot of time keeping on top of the literature… we need to stay experts.” Ending tenure could thus risk ending, or at least damaging, expertise in many fields—something that doesn't concern Taylor, who seems to operate under the assumption that there's more new knowledge to invent than existing knowledge to aalyze.

According to Lamont, what Taylor proposes would constitute “the deprofessionalization of academics,” and turn universities into business schools instead of knowledge factories. Not only that, his proposal would “have a huge negative impact on funding and research in the social sciences, as the knowledge we produce would not translate into money-making in the market. Saying "Academia does not necessarily have measurable contributions like business, but the research it produces has major social value," Lamont points out that “a lot of concepts now used to describe reality were developed from social sciences.”

Lamont also stresses that academics “have a role in preserving knowledge” in ways that the market might not support. Perhaps it doesn’t pay monetarily to recall democracy’s roots in ancient Greece, but would our world really function as well if we couldn’t contextualize our present-day problems in a larger framework? Problem-based studies may seem like a smart idea, until you consider the problems that may arise without prediction. Additionally, "knowledge is part of our quality of life," Lamont says, and has intrinsic, unmeasurable benefits. After all, how will we know where we're going if we don't know where we've been?

When screening candidates for jobs, managers must make evaluative decisions that are somewhat similar to the choices made by peer review committees. However, as Lamont points out, “the big difference with the hiring process is that you have to live with people, so there’s more emphasis on interpersonal skills.” While review committees and even admission committees can award grants or admission and be done with a candidate, professionals must interact with hires on a daily basis. This is also where the graduate admission process, conducted by faculty members, differs from undergraduate admission, which is removed from the actual teaching process.

“When faculty members decide on graduate students, they will have to teach the students,” Lamont points out. “There’s a balance between power and influence” when deciding what students to take. The “ongoing relationship from year to year” between faculty members requires them to “keep relationships manageable among themselves,” not to mention with students from semester to semester.

So what hope do academics have in a society that doesn't appreciate their contributions like it might? Lamont says there’s plenty of hope, but the key is persistence, not necessarily intelligence. “Assume that the process is somewhat irrational,” Lamont advises. Applications should “read seamlessly, be unbelievably clear.” Ultimately, “what you need to do is apply very very widely and be very determined and stubborn about leaving no stone unturned.” This is good advice for job seekers as well as academics: maybe we do all have something to learn from one another.

Lamont's defense of academia makes sense, particularly given that she's a part of it. But Taylor's critique, too, makes sense. The very subjectivity for which Taylor attacks academia is what feeds the sometimes-arbitrary nature of peer review. Our society is evolving; we don't need academia to serve quite the same function anymore. We must still preserve ideas, of course, but perhaps we can come up with new ways to do so—online, interactively, differently than before. The past doesn't have to fight the future: the future can study the past without failing to evolve into something new. Rather than keep business and academia as separate as they've been for so long, why not find ways for both sectors to work together in ways that could benefit both rather than erasing either? It might be a long shot, but it may be better than the end of the university as we know it.