Losing My Stomach for Honest Academic Exchange

Brian Tamanaha

A few months ago I found myself in a fix over a book review I had committed to. When the Editor asked me to do the review, I readily agreed because I have known the author (in a collegial way) for many years, and I admire his work. I expected that the book, which I had not yet seen, would be excellent. Unfortunately, after reading the book, I had very serious reservations about the argument.

At that point, I had two options:

I could be honest and write a deeply critical review. But that would likely spell the end of our relationship.

I could write a bland descriptive review of the argument in the book which left out my critical concerns. But that would betray the readers of the review who expected an honest appraisal of the book.

I told the Editor that I could not bring myself to write the honest critical review, but would be willing to write the descriptive one. He did not want a descriptive review, and graciously let me off the hook.

More recently, I was asked by a different journal to review another book I had not yet read, although this time I did not know the author. I agreed because the subject is in my field. Much of the book was interesting and informative, but it was, in my opinion, flawed in important ways.

This time I went ahead and wrote the review, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Although I emphasized the strengths, no doubt the weaknesses I identify will loom large for anyone who reads the review (and certainly for the author). From the moment I sent the review to the Editor, I have experienced pangs of remorse for the critical things I wrote.

From now on, to avoid being in these situations, I have resolved to only write reviews for books that I truly like (which I have done with pleasure a number of times). I feel like a coward, shirking my responsibility as an academic.

I haven’t always been reluctant to offer pointed criticisms of academic work, and I still do so—as I recently did in a post about the “judicial politics” field—if I think that a useful point would come of it. But I am becoming increasingly gun shy about the whole “honest academic debate” enterprise.

One reason for my reluctance is that I know I have offended people in the past—people I like and admire—by giving my honest critical opinion on an academic matter, an opinion which I meant as a part of an intellectual exchange but which they took personally. Although I was careful to not articulate my objections in personal terms, we all take our own ideas seriously, and thus it is easy to be put off personally by criticisms of the ideas.

Another reason for my reluctance is that there is a lot of nastiness in the realm of the exchange of ideas today (witness blog comment threads), including in law reviews (particularly in connection with book reviews). We seem to be collectively losing the sense of what it means to disagree over ideas while not being personal and not taking it personally.

It’s not as much fun as it used to be to have a frank exchange of ideas, at least for me. More importantly, if we all start censoring our critical thoughts out of a desire not to offend others, or to avoid provoking a backlash, academic discourse will suffer. For this reason, I hope others do not share in my cowardice.
Posted 2:38 PM by Brian Tamanaha [link]