Today CNN published an article quoting me about the Kentucky law that prohibits Rand Paul from appearing on the ballot for both President and U.S. Senate at the same time. During the election season I published a few Op–Eds on various issues involving the electoral process. Beyond the shameless self-promotion, in this post I want to explore the value of law professors appearing in the “popular press.” Why do some professors welcome media inquiries or write Op-Eds? And what value should our schools give to that activity?
In my view, there are several benefits to using the popular press to share our expertise. Of course, there’s the inherent “wow” factor in seeing one’s name in a major publication. But that’s purely self-serving. I think there more signfiicant instutitional and prudential considerations for being quoted or writing an Op-Ed.
First, it brings publicity to one’s law school. Especially given that I teach at a public institution, I believe it is my duty to explain complex election law problems to the general public. It provides institutional goodwill, giving the state’s taxpayers some additional value for employing me.
Second, it helps expose more people to my work. In an age when judges and others question the value of legal scholarship, using the popular press shows the world how scholarship relates to the “real world” and can have an actual impact.
Third, I think it makes me a better scholar. When I have to distill a concept from a law review article into a quote or Op-Ed, it inherently makes me refine and shape the overall argument.
Fourth, it assists my teaching. Law students are generally not “experts,” and one goal of classroom instruction is to explain complex topics in easy-to-understand ways. The more we practice this technique, whether in the classroom or in the media, the better we are at what is often a very difficult task.
But this discussion raising an intriguing question: what value should this kind of activity have in our assessments? It’s not obviously teaching, scholarship, or service, although it fits in with all three activities. Should law schools value this activity more? Or is the inherent excitement of being known publicly as an “expert” enough?
I’m not sure. I engage in these activities because, as noted above, I believe it is my public duty, and because I think it makes me a better scholar and teacher. Plus, I have tenure now, so does it matter anyway?!
Posted by Josh Douglas on December 2, 2014 at 01:45 PM
Comments
I agree that, as a matter of taxonomy, it is “service.”
I also agree with Jason yackee, that if one goes by a school website, “getting quoted by the Columbus Dispatch or whathaveyou is more valuable, to someone, than scholarship.” One question concerns how many/which someones. It is surely more valuable to the person managing the website content; that person is probably in communications, more likely to like media mentions, and less likely to be comfortable assessing independently the value (if any) of recent scholarship . . . unless reported on by third parties. Or it is there because professors are proud and ask that it be circulated. Neither necessarily shows much about what the university wants to emphasize, and allow it to deny that it seeks such behavior and rewards it.
If websites and the like do more generally indicate how professors should be spending time, it has interesting implications for the job that I doubt have been carefully considered. Maybe someone assumes that it relates to teaching ability (if not necessarily time and devotion), or maybe they assume that media presence is derivative of, or correlated to, the expertise that also generates scholarship; I doubt either correlation is that strong.
Probably schools just like non-negative publicity as a way of attracting students and donors. If that’s true, though, they should probably rethink how they recruit and compensate faculty; ultimately, they should also examine with much greater care the quality of the media content. That would make citation counts and teaching evaluations look positively scientific.
Posted by: Confessor | Dec 3, 2014 4:43:28 PM
At least if it is mostly informative, as opposed to mostly advocacy, I’d say public engagement falls squarely within the realm of service. I’ve always heard that service is made up of: service to the institution, the profession, and the society.
Posted by: brad | Dec 3, 2014 4:15:42 PM
I assume it must have some value to the law school in terms of publicity? Every time a law professor at my institution is quoted in a media story, it quickly makes it to the top of our school’s website–appearing above, I would add, the list of recent faculty scholarly activities, which you typically have to scroll down to see. So going by that metric, getting quoted by the Columbus Dispatch or whathaveyou is more valuable, to someone, than scholarship.
Posted by: jason yackee | Dec 2, 2014 6:40:10 PM
The first claim — publicity to the school — strikes me as generally true. I am more skeptical of the teaching point (save in the sense that it likely makes students hold you in higher esteem) and also of the scholarship point.
I also think we should also be more exact about the second claim and what it means to “expose people to [your] work” (SSRN link omitted). A relatively small proportion of law professor media work involves actually discussing or relying directly on anything distinctive about one’s “work,” in the sense of scholarship. Usually it involves commentary on a matter of public attention that fall in or near one’s area of expertise, quite often on matters anyone writing, teaching, or practicing in the field could address, and relatively rarely involves actual deference or reference to those who have done the most recent or the most apt work. So it is a public service, and it does ensure personal and institutional publicity, and sometimes actual work is discussed. But often it has no greater relationship to scholarship than Nancy Grace has to criminology. I think it is on balance a boon to one’s school, and certainly to oneself, but it is plausibly a distraction from more scholarly work and corruptive of its norms.
Posted by: Mediator | Dec 2, 2014 5:57:39 PM
Going just off how I break it up on my cv: Interviews are service to the public, op-eds are “other writing” that sort of straddles the line between service and scholarship.
I’m not sure about the teaching point. I think/hope I pitch my classes slightly higher than I pitch my interviews.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Dec 2, 2014 5:09:49 PM
Josh (and Rick),
I also believe that such activities are important, especially but not solely for professors at public institutions. I would put these activities squarely in the category of service to the profession and community. They’re not scholarship or teaching. Unfortunately, at many schools I get the sense that service doesn’t really matter, and that it’s all about scholarship. For the reasons you give, I think that view is myopic. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Steven R. Morrison | Dec 2, 2014 4:16:52 PM
Hi Josh — I agree with you that these activities have some value, and that they can assist both scholarship and teaching. It strikes me also that — if they are done well — they are also, in a way, “service” to the profession and the community. At its best, this kind of thing can be public education about things that our fellow citizens need to know about. (Now, of course, at its worst — or maybe even at its median — it can be self-serving hackery or underinformed blathering . . . but not in our cases, right? =-) ).
Posted by: Rick Garnett | Dec 2, 2014 2:40:04 PM