Publish/Perish

[Louanna Furbee]

Colleagues,
I'm moved to respond to the cynical view Pat Warren expresses
regarding the limits on the altruism of academic linguists.  I have
found academics almost to a person full of generosity toward the
languages they study and peoples for whom those languages are
heritage.  I suppose there are successful linguists who only care to
publish, only care to obtain the citations, but I have yet to meet
one.   Instead, I have found  enormous concern and generosity among
linguists - department chairs, named chair holders, distinguished
colleagues and beginning students. They very often have taken extra
time from their own academic obligations to help speakers in ways
that range from getting someone to a doctor (too many examples to
list), to editing grant proposals, to nurturing the education of
speakers so they themselves can take up the linguistic effort (e.g.,
since the 1970s with  speakers of Guatemalan indigenous languages, in
recent decades the various development institutes in the U.S.),
obtaining grants collaboratively with the speakers for projects they
wish to do, establishing archives, establishing funds to award grants
(ELF, FEL), starting special programs to prepare scholars, indeed
just training the cadre of new scholars itself.  These are not
"non-publishing" academics who have been leaders:  They are people
like Ken Hale, Bob Dixon, Nora England, Bob  Rankin, Akira Yamamoto,
Colette Grinevald, Doug Whalen, Stephen Anderson, Leanne Hinton - in
fact, as I say, just about everyone I can think of.  Maybe I should
mention here Noam Chomsky who divides his time, and speaking
engagements, pretty much equally between linguistics and political
opinion, the latter his version of "service".  It IS true, that in
the very early stages of an academic career, it is necessary for the
assistant professor, who is only just learning how to be an
independent scholar who can put together also collaborative research
efforts, to run very hard to publish enough in the 5-6 yrs before the
tenure decision and to demonstrate that s/he can get research up and
going.  In such a period and situation, just the hours in the day
limit a person's capacity to help, but even at that, I have found
many young scholars expending lots more of their time and energies
than one might think they could or should.  Most of us in research
universities (presumably those of us most likely to fit the
stereotype sketched) work under appointments that are something like
40% Teaching - 40% Research - 20% Service.  Most of the folks I know
more than fulfill that 20% service requirement, often by working
hours that are more like 60/week rather than 40/week.   Finally, a
career is a long time - 30 years or more.  Maybe some of the young
cannot afford to expend as much time as they'd like to serve the
communities that give them their research careers, but later when
they are secure, they give back.  It is a kind of pattern of life.
Louanna Furbee
--
Prof. N. Louanna Furbee
Department of Anthropology
107 Swallow Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO  65211 USA
Telephones: 573/882-9408 (office)
	   573/882-4731 (department)
	   573/446-0932 (home)
	   573/884-5450 (fax)
E-mail:  FurbeeL at missouri.edu