Peers who persecute

I don't know what's wrong with people in academe who, in their moments of bias, call the work of others as trash and without rigor when they themselves do not understand what it is all about.

I, for one, have been getting this flak for a long time.

As a post-modern political scientist, my scholarly endeavors are far from the usual and ordinary. I do not study what most in the political science community are studying. And in doing so, I am definitely an outsider.

I know this as the risk I had to take. Facing the specter of being marginalized, I had no choice but to endeavor to publish as my way of laying the ground from where the firm bases of my scholarships can stand. It is not an easy task, mind you, but modesty aside I was somewhat successful.

There were many stumbling blocks along the way, though.

Recently, my book manuscript was called a piece of trash by what I found out to be a Filipino scholar who now lives in the United States. The review was so mean and insulting that I recoiled at how deeply angry the reviewer could be. I know that the book I wrote is controversial, but I never thought it could elicit such a violent response from someone who was presumed to provide an objective review. After recovering from the initial shock at such personal assault, I gathered up myself to confront it and soon realized that the problem lies not in my book, but in the academic politics against which it is ranged.

The mean reviewer, who I may not know by name, and have no interest in knowing, is not actually alone. There are so many of them found in the august halls of the academe. People who masquerade as dignified experts who are committed to a particular profession, but are in fact insecure, childlike, envious brats who would persecute anyone they see as threats to them--from people who raise new ideas that would threaten their own comfort zones, to colleagues who threaten to overtake their academic ranks.

They abound like gremlins after being drenched with water.

Some people may hold up to high esteem the academe as an exalted place.

But unfortunately, it is a place where peers end up as persecutors. Some may have the courage to do it upfront and reveal themselves. These are the easier ones to deal with. Its either you just ignore them, or you fight them head on.

But the more dangerous kind are those who hide in the anonymity of double blind reviews--just like this S.O.B. Americanized Filipino scholar who called my work a piece of trash, who I know would not have the courage to say the things he said about my book to my face. Unlike this coward, I can face him anytime to express an "up yours" response.

The process of peer reviewing is one of the most abused endeavor, both in the process of publishing a work, or in seeking a promotion, and becomes a breeding ground for scholarly persecution, and a nurturer of malicious intent.

There are those who would accept the task of becoming critics of scholarly works when in fact they have fundamental disagreements with these in terms of methodological and theoretical frames. I would like to think that if you have fundamental differences with the approach of a particular scholarly work, then you are not in fact a peer, and therefore have no right to be involved as a peer reviewer. It is a travesty for a conservative political scholar to serve as a critic of a manuscript written by a radical Marxist, or an empirical-positivist to pass judgment on a work done by a post-structuralist post-feminist. What would you expect from this picture: an unbiased review? Only the seriously naive would think so.

The more serious, and I would even claim criminal, offense is when people from other disciplines, or who do not have any iota of familiarity with one's work, take on the job of passing judgment on the work and qualifications of others. You see this in promotions board where people from other disciplines can claim a work of somebody from another discipline to be unacceptable. I can even tolerate biases. But this one is not borne out of bias, but out of sheer arrogant ignorance.

Unfortunately, the control mechanisms to ensure that peers who persecute are not given their day to terrorize are not yet fully in place. There are still editors who do not have an understanding of the nuances of a particular discipline, and the different grounds from where ideological rifts would eventually descend to personal conflicts. And there are University administrators who try to inflict their own disciplines' supposedly neutral ethos into others. You see this happening when you have University Administrators who are engineers, natural scientists, or economists of the mathematical kind who make decisions over the careers of humanists and interpretive social scientists.

I had once a conversation with a well-meaning administrator who argued that no one can put a good scholarly work down.

I pointed out that, ideally, that should be the case. Unfortunately, it's not.

And it is this naivete, or perhaps, this too much trust on the kindness of people, that enable the proliferation in the University of peers who persecute.

It should be said. There are just too many nasty, insecure, envious and immature people in academe. That is the ugly truth.