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标题: Rate Your Professors [打印本页]

作者: apple 时间: 2010-2-3 05:30 标题: Rate Your Professors

August 3rd, 2009

Michéle Lamont. How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. Harvard University Press. March 2009.

How Professors Think takes up the arcane subject of academic peer review, specifically peer review in the context of fellowship competitions. Michéle Lamont, a sociology professor at Harvard, secured unusual access to five of the foundations that fund fellowships in the humanities and social sciences, among them the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Over a period of two years, she spoke with foundation staff and read foundation documents, but she spent most of her time interviewing the professors who had volunteered to serve on the multidisciplinary panels that award the fellowships, sometimes even sitting in on their deliberations. This book is her account of what she found, supplemented with telling quotations from the panelists she interviewed and scores of charts compiling her findings.

It's clear why academics would be interested in a book about peer review, but How Professors Think is being marketed for a general readership. Here, peer review serves as a proxy for all the acts of judgment that make up the university, all the decisions about who is admitted, who is rewarded, what is worth studying, and why. A study of how professors think, or rather how they judge, this is ultimately a book about how the university works. And Lamont's frequent references to "opening the black box" seem to promise that the book will be an exposé. Certainly, an exposé would find a ready audience. As the New York Times confirms almost daily, there seems to be an insatiable appetite for attacks on the university and no end of disaffected professors eager to feed it. Nearly all writing about the university takes the form of the jeremiad. The financial crisis has provided the most recent excuse, if any excuse were needed, for another round of laments that standards are falling, costs are rising, affirmative action has ruined everything; the professors are would-be radicals, the professors are would-be celebrities; the old disciplines are outmoded, the new disciplines are fraudulent; the undergraduates are twittering, their parents are helicoptering; no one is being trained for the global economy, no one is teaching the classics anymore.

Lamont avoids these temptations, seeking instead to describe the academy in its banal, workaday reality. She shows that while the funding foundations give little explicit guidance to the professors awarding the fellowships, peer review nonetheless operates according to unspoken, but powerful, norms. The professors serving on the panels are expected to set aside self-interest, recusing themselves from voting for their students or against their rivals; they are expected to judge a proposal by the standards of the applicant's own discipline; they are expected to defer to panelists more expert in a given field; they are expected, as one puts it, "not [to] be an asshole." To be sure, these rules are never followed perfectly. There is, Lamont reveals, horse trading and strategic voting, bullying and sniping, eye-rolling and heavy sighing, and panelists voting on whims (one panelist rejected a proposal on Viagra because she was just "so sick" of hearing about male sexuality). The deliberations invariably get off to a slow start, as the panelists jockey for position, and the final few proposals are always dispatched quickly because the panelists all have planes to catch. Indeed, one panel failed to award all the fellowships at its disposal because they simply ran out of time.

And yet, despite all this, the panelists believe that they have judged fairly and identified the best proposals. "I think the process works very well," one says, "it's just hard to articulate what it is." The process works, Lamont argues, precisely because people believe in it. Believing that the other panelists are acting fairly, the panelists act fairly themselves, and describing the process as fair, or fair enough, Lamont does her part to ensure that it continues to be so. And if, as one panelist ruefully acknowledges, "nothing is perfect," if some promising proposals are inadvertently overlooked, there's always the hope that another foundation will recognize those proposals and award them the fellowships they deserve. All of this may not be particularly inspiring—but then these professors aren't vamping for the op-ed page. They're simply doing an ordinary part of their job, and doing it as well as they can. It's in this context that we can best appreciate Lamont's own style. If she sometimes muffles her observations in a few too many abstractions or blunts her arguments by positioning them too scrupulously within scholarly debates, it is because she is writing as an academic who believes in her vocation and is paying her readers the respect of addressing them in its language.

Lamont's focus on fellowship competitions affords her a unique view of the disciplines. She devotes a chapter to discussing six: philosophy, English, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Lamont intends her account of these disciplines to be purely descriptive; she thinks of each discipline as having its own "culture of evaluation," and she wants to understand the rules governing those cultures without judging them herself. Insofar as she succeeds in doing this, the chapter disappoints. Drawing more heavily here than elsewhere on the work of other scholars, Lamont offers potted histories of the various disciplines, and so we hear echoes of the old jeremiads against postmodernism and "French theory," and we hear once more about the canon wars in English, the reflexive turn in anthropology, and, in political science, the rise of rational choice. (We hear the old misleading statistics as well. Lamont uses the number of PhDs conferred in a discipline as a measure of its relative intellectual prestige, without ever acknowledging that the shrinking of PhD programs might be a deliberate response, as it has been in the case of many English departments, to the ongoing adjunctification of university teaching.) Lamont's attempts at neutral description are inevitably shaped, however, by what her own research has revealed: some disciplines win disproportionately many fellowships, while others win disproportionately few. Beneath her neutral descriptions, then, lurk normative claims about what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful disciplines, and it is here that her analysis gets interesting.

The two unsuccessful disciplines are philosophy, which Lamont calls a "problem field," and English, which she claims is in crisis. Both fail to secure their share of fellowships because they fail to describe themselves in ways that other disciplines find persuasive. For English, the problem is that the discipline is too open. "I am coming from English," one panelist says, "and in English today anything goes." Where English scholars once focused primarily on literary works, they now describe their projects as pursuing questions that are historical, theoretical, or cultural in the broadest sense, focusing on sixteenth-century bookbinding, for instance, or Derrida's theory of hospitality, or reality TV. As a result, proposals by English scholars are seen as wandering into territory claimed by other disciplines (history, art history, film studies, philosophy, political theory, anthropology, and sociology), and they are faulted for not following the methods of those disciplines, for not analyzing historical documents, for instance, as a historian would. English is seen as having no method of its own. Where once English scholars identified themselves as doing close readings, they now tend to be tongue-tied when it comes to talking about their method. Only one of Lamont's interviewees tries to make the case that the discipline has a distinctive method, venturing to say that she thinks English scholars are "good readers" of historical documents, but she gives up the ground almost as soon as she claims it, wondering whether historians might not "know how to do this better" after all.

Where English is too open, philosophy is too closed. Philosophers continue to do what they have always done, exploring what one of them describes as "the very traditional problems that [have] defined the subject for, you know, thousands of years" and using methods that they think of as uniquely rigorous. But while the philosophers themselves believe in what they do, they fail to make the case to the other disciplines. Problems that are already thousands of years old don't impress panelists who prize originality, and methods that philosophers think of as defining critical thinking often prove to be incomprehensible to those outside the field. As a result, a geographer describes the philosophy proposals as "absolutely unintelligible," an English scholar admits that, even after much explanation, she "just still didn't get it," and a foundation official actually intervened in one panel's deliberations to urge the panelists to judge the philosophers a little more leniently.

The successful disciplines, by contrast, do make a strong case for themselves. Historians, for instance, present themselves as belonging to a unified discipline, speaking often of what "we historians" do. They maintain this unity despite the fact that history, like English, has radically expanded its focus. Political, diplomatic, and economic histories have been joined by social and cultural ones, and historians now pay more attention to ordinary people, overlooked groups, and forgotten regions of the world. At the same time, historians, again like English scholars, have been open to questioning their own premises, with some arguing that the discipline is objective and others, that it is subjective; with some thinking of themselves as empiricists and others, as theorists. All of these changes have caused divisions, but historians speak of these divisions as having been pushed to the margins, so that the center, the "pretty big, pretty calm, not overtly politicized" center, remains strong. What unites history in the face of these expansions and divisions is a commitment to a single method, namely "careful archival work." So long as a project relies on archival research, historians identify it as belonging to their discipline and defend it on those grounds. Something similar can be said of economics, which also addresses an ever-expanding array of questions, but pursues them all through a single method, mathematical formalism. Recently, this method has spread to political science, where rational choice theory is squeezing out competing approaches. Setting history and economics alongside English and philosophy, Lamont implies that disciplines make a strong case for themselves when they unify around a shared method, no matter how problematic that method may be. After all, while one economist describes the method of his field, striking a note of sardonic triumph, as "spreading like a cancer," that spread has only strengthened the position of economics.

But while fellowship competitions reward the unified disciplines, the university has a need for the more divided ones as well. Scholarly questions do not always arise, docilely, within the context of existing disciplines, and so the more divided disciplines are needed to take in the new methods and topics that the unified disciplines would exclude. English, for instance, has welcomed the many philosophers that philosophy rejects, from Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard to Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, as well as Richard Rorty, and it has sheltered the many interdisciplinary projects, in women's studies, African-American studies, and cultural studies, that would be much more vulnerable without a disciplinary home. Viewing the disciplines through the lens of the fellowship competition, Lamont presumes that they are all trying to do the same thing, namely advancing their own interests as well as they can in a zero sum game. But viewing the disciplines in the broader context of the university, we see that they perform different functions within a larger system.

If Lamont's focus on fellowship competitions prevents her from seeing the value of the more divided disciplines, her own method prevents her from recognizing that even the divided ones are not quite so divided as they might seem. Lamont's method is the interview. Although she is self-conscious about how she may be distorting the fellowship competition in the very act of studying it, she nonetheless continues to believe that if she wants to know how professors think, she can simply ask them. But there is a crucial difference between rhetoric and practice, between what people say and what they actually do. This difference is most obvious to me when Lamont is discussing my own discipline, English, but there's no reason to believe that it's not present in other disciplines as well. What Lamont hears, when she interviews English scholars, is a rhetoric of division and questioning. One scholar celebrates the "kind of internal self-critique, which is good ... very healthy," while another says, "it's always good to be a little more sort of self-conscious and self-aware and self-questioning when you come into things," and a third admits, "there's no real, no sort of set terms of agreement." But these same scholars also admit, and Lamont does not take this seriously enough, that their actual practice is far more unified and certain. One notes that whatever disputes he may have with his colleagues, they invariably agree when grading student work, while another observes that while it may be difficult to say what characterizes great scholarship, nonetheless "when you see it, you don't miss it." Divided in rhetoric, consensual in practice, English clearly has norms and standards that it does not articulate. (As it happens, one of these norms is the persistence of close reading as a method, decades after its putative demise. Indeed, so enduring is close reading that the most provocative scholarly work of the past ten years has been Franco Moretti's call for "distant reading," an empirical approach to the vast numbers of non-canonical works that would go otherwise unread.)

There is another problem with Lamont's method, as well. More qualitative than many sociologists, Lamont nonetheless does a great deal of empirical analysis. As she conducts her interviews, she listens for the often-repeated words. She recognizes that when panelists speak of excellence, they tend to speak of clarity, quality, originality, significance, and feasibility, and she takes these words to constitute a kind of lingua franca of judgment, a language that allows political scientists to speak to anthropologists and philosophers. Having identified these words, Lamont has her research assistants transform the words into codes, the codes into data, and then aggregate the data into statistics, all through a process that she details in an appendix. At times, Lamont's statistics cut through the noise of long-ritualized debates and reveal facts that neither side has grappled with, as when she shows that the diversity practiced in academic contexts bears little relation to the diversity that figures, for better or worse, in the public imagination. That is, a number of panelists refer to "diversity" as a factor when making awards, but they are much more likely to be speaking of diversity of institution (35 percent) or discipline (34 percent) than to be speaking of diversity of gender (15 percent) or race (14 percent). At other times, however, her statistics don't reveal nearly as much. Our sense of how professors judge is not greatly enriched by knowing that clarity is mentioned more often by humanists (68 percent) than by social scientists (41 percent) or that 41percent of all panelists speculate about the moral qualities of the applicants, in particular, hard work (31 percent), humility (21 percent), and authenticity (19 percent). The lingua franca of judgment is too impoverished a language to capture the standards the panelists are actually applying when they judge.

How Professors Think offers a richly detailed and persuasive account of peer review, one that is likely to inspire further scholarship in the sociology of judgment, in addition to reassuring academics more generally that peer review is fair. So there is no question that this book is of interest to academic readers. But what of the book's general readers, who are less interested in peer review than in the university more generally? Lamont's account of the university, focusing as it does on procedures of judgment, proves to be curiously bloodless. While she departs from the jeremiad tradition in describing professors as simply doing their jobs as best as they can, she fails to tell us what those jobs really are—or why they are worth doing. At moments, Lamont's interviews capture real intellectual passion, as when scholars speak eloquently in praise of those whose work they most admire or, more haltingly, about the deep pleasure they take in their own work. Pure brilliance, sheer delight—these come rarely, but they are what motivates scholarship and what scholarship aspires to be. Neither, however, can be easily captured by the procedures of peer review. And so while Lamont's book does many important things very well, the one thing it fails to do is to describe how professors, at their best, actually think.

—Amanda Claybaugh

source: http://www.nplusonemag.com/rate-your-professors

作者: apple 时间: 2010-2-3 05:32

教授怎么想

阿曼达•克莱宝著　吴万伟译

　刊发时间：2009-10-12 16:42:25　光明网-光明观察

　　《教授怎么想》探讨了学术界同行评议的神秘话题，尤其是在课题资助竞争时的评价问题。哈佛大学社会学教授米歇尔·拉蒙曾参与五个基金会的人文社科课题申报的评审工作，其中包括美国学术团体协会和社会科学研究中心，所以对这个话题十分熟悉。在过去两年里，她与基金会工作人员交谈，阅读基金会文件，花费大量时间采访那些自愿参加课题评审跨学科委员会的教授，有时候甚至直接参与他们的讨论。该书是她调查研究的结果，同时补充了所采访的委员会成员的代表性言论以及佐证她的发现的图表数据。

　　我们很清楚学术界的人为什么会对同行评议的书感兴趣，但《教授怎么想》主要是面向普通读者的。这里，同行评议是大学所有评价行为的代理，如招收谁、奖励谁、应该学什么、为什么等决策。拉蒙常常提到“打开黑匣子”，似乎承诺该书是一本暴露内幕的书。当然，暴露内幕的书往往能吸引读者。正如《纽约时报》几乎每天都会证实的，人们似乎有一个难以满足的愿望，以抨击大学为乐。心怀不满的教授迫不急待地提供源源不断的弹药。几乎所有关于大学的文章都是哀声叹气的。如果需要借口的话，金融危机提供了最新的借口。新一轮的哀叹接踵而至，如质量下降，学费上升，照顾性做法破坏了一切，教授可能是激进分子或者是爱出风头的明星，传统学科陈旧过时，新学科是骗人的把戏，本科生在上网twittering，他们的父母像直升飞机在头顶盘旋，大学没有训练学生去适应全球经济，没有人愿意再讲授经典等等不一而足。

　　拉蒙抗拒了这些诱惑，相反，企图来描述学术界平庸的、日常现实。她显示虽然提供课题资助的基金会很少明确指导获得资助的教授要做什么，但同行评议是按照心照不宣然而又非常严格的惯例来操作的。人们期待担任评审小组成员的教授应该抛开自我利益，避免投票支持自己的学生或投票反对自己的论敌。他们应该根据候选人自己的学科标准来评价研究申请。人们期待他们遵从某个特定领域专家的评审小组成员的意见。正如有人说的，人们期待他们“不要成为笨蛋”。当然，这些原则从来没有被完美地遵循过。拉蒙揭露说，评审中存在激烈的讨价还价后才达成交易，战略性投票，欺侮和削减，眼睛滴溜溜地转或者咳声叹气，小组成员一时心血来潮地投票（一评审员投票反对有关伟哥的研究课题，仅仅因为她听到男性性生活就“恶心”）。一般来说评审讨论刚开始往往很缓慢，因为小组成员要确定立场，最后的几个课题总是很快就被打发掉了，因为评审员都急着要赶飞机。实际上，有的小组讨论没有能把资金分配出去仅仅因为讨论时间不够了。

　　但是，尽管如此，评审员相信他们判断公正，能辨认出最好的课题。一个说“我认为评审过程进展很好，很难表达它是什么”。拉蒙认为这个过程起作用恰恰是因为人们相信它的公正性。相信其他小组成员是公正的，小组成员自己行为公正，他们描述过程是公正的或者相当公正。拉蒙尽了自己的努力，保证评审仍将是公正的。正如一评审员承认的，“没有十全十美的事”，或许有些很有前途的课题被漫不经心地忽略了，但总是有希望另一个基金会将认识到它的价值，给予它应得的资助。所有这些或许并不特别令人激动，但这些教授并不是竞相发表特约评论文章，他们不过是做平常的工作而已，尽可能把它做好。正是在这个背景下我们才能最好地欣赏拉蒙的风格。或许她的观察有时候不清楚，或许抽象论述太多，或者把论述过分严格地限制在学术辩论中而减弱了论证的力量，但，这正是因为她是以大学教师的身份写的，她相信自己的使命，用学术界的语言阐述这些问题，表达对读者的敬意。

　　拉蒙集中谈论课题资助竞争使得她获得看待学科发展的独特视角。她花费一章的篇幅讨论了六个学科：哲学、英语、历史、人类学、政治学和经济学。拉蒙打算把自己对这些学科的描述都变成纯粹描述性的，她认为每个学科都有自己的“评价文化”，她想弄明白指导这些文化的原则，但同时不做任何判断。尽管她成功地做到了这点，但这一章让人失望。拉蒙描述了不同学科的堕落史，所以我们听到上年纪的悲观预言者反对后现代主义和“法国理论”的回声，我们再次听到了英语系中更多关于经典的战争，人类学、政治学中“内省的转向”，理性选择的兴起（我们听到古老的误导人的统计数字。拉蒙使用一个学科里授予的博士学位数量作为其思想地位的评价标准，不承认博士项目缩小可能是有意的回应，如许多英语系的情况，它是对当今大学教学的辅助性地位的回应）。拉蒙的中立性描述的企图不可避免地实现了，但她自己的研究暴露的是：有些学科获得了过多的基金资助，而另外一些学科获得的非常之少。在她中立性的描述背后潜伏着区分成功和不成功学科的规范性评价，正是在这些地方使得她的分析变得非常有趣。

　　两个不成功的学科是拉蒙称为“问题领域”的哲学和她称为“危机”的英语。这两个学科都没有获得应得的资助比例，因为他们没有能像其他学科那样用有说服力的方式描述自己。对英语来说，问题是该学科太开放了，一评审员说“我来自英语系，如今在英语系，你研究什么都可以。”英语学者最初主要是研究文学作品，现在，他们的课题是研究最广泛意义上的历史问题、理论问题、文化问题，比如16世纪的图书装订，德里达的好客理论或者现实电视。结果，英语学者的课题申请被看作闯入了其他学科领域（历史、艺术史、电影研究、哲学、政治理论、人类学、社会学）。有人指责他们没有遵循这些学科的研究方法，如不像历史学家那样分析历史文献。英语被看作没有自己的研究方法。原来英语学者把自己定义为进行精读的人，如今在谈到自己的研究方法时往往三缄其口。拉蒙采访的人中只有一个说英语学科有独特的方法，并大胆地说她认为英语学者是历史文献的“好读者”，但很快就放弃了这个基础，因为她纳闷历史学家也未必“知道该怎样做才更好”。

　　如果说英语太开放了，哲学则过于封闭了。哲学家们继续做他们一直在做的事，探索一个哲学家所描述的“定义该学科的传统问题，几千年来一直在研究的问题，你知道”。哲学家使用自己认为独特和有效的研究方法，但尽管他们自己相信在做的事的价值，但无法说服其他学科相信。有几千年历史的问题不能给评审员留下深刻的印象，他们看重的是独创性。而哲学家所说的批评性思考的方法常常不被其他领域所理解。结果，正如一地理学家认定哲学课题申请“完全不知所云”，一英语学者承认即使经过很多解释，“还是没有弄明白它在说什么”。基金会的官员实际上在小组讨论时插话，敦促评审员在评判哲学家时更仁慈一些。

　　相反，成功的学科确实能有力地为自己辩护。比如，历史学家把历史描述为统一的学科，常常说“我们历史学家”如何如何。虽然历史像英语一样极大地扩张了自己的研究焦点，但维持了这种统一性。政治史、外交史、经济史之外添加了社会史和文化史，历史学家现在更多关心普通人，忽略群体，忘记世界的区域性。与此同时，历史学者像英语学者一样，开放性地质疑自己的前提。有人认为这个学科是客观性的，有人认为是主观性的，有些认为自己是实证主义者，有些则认为自己是理论家。所有这些变化已经造成分裂，但历史学家谈到这些分裂时，把它们看作边缘性的东西，但是“很强大、很平静、没有明显政治化的中心”依然强大。在这些扩张和分裂面前把历史团结起来的因素是对单一方法的承诺，也就是“认真的档案研究”。只要课题依赖档案研究，历史学家就认为它属于自己的学科，并在此基础上为它辩护。同样的，经济学也能这么说。它也在探讨越来越广泛的问题，但都是通过单一方法---数学模型来研究。最近，这个方法已经延伸到政治学领域，理性选择理论已经挤压竞争性途径的空间了。把历史学、经济学和英语、哲学并排放置，拉蒙暗示那些能够团结在一个统一的方法周围，为自己强烈辩护的学科就是成功者，不管这方法存在多大问题。毕竟，正如一个经济学家洋洋自得地描述他的研究方法像“癌症的扩散”一样迅速蔓延，可是这种扩散只能增强经济学的地位。

　　但是，尽管研究基金的竞争给予团结的学科以回报，大学却需要学科的更多分裂。在现有学科的背景下，并不总能产生学术性问题，所以学科需要更多的分裂来吸收统一的学科所排除的新方法和新话题。比如，英语系已经接收了哲学系排斥的许多哲学家，如雅各·德里达、让·弗朗索瓦·利奥塔（Jean-Fran·oisLyotard）、阿兰·巴迪欧（AlainBadiou）、吉奥乔·阿甘本（GiorgioAgamben）和理查德·罗蒂（RichardRorty），而且容纳了很多跨学科课题，如女性研究、美国黑人研究、文化研究等如果没有学科之家就更脆弱的东西。拉蒙从研究基金竞争的视角看待学科，认为它们都在做同样的事，也就是在零和游戏中追求自己的利益。但在大学的更大背景下看待学科，我们看到它们在一更大的体系内发挥着不同的功能。

　　如果拉蒙关注研究基金的学科竞争阻碍了她看到学科分裂的价值，她自己的方法则阻碍了她认识到即使分裂的学科也不像看起来那么四分五裂。拉蒙的方法是访谈。虽然她自己认识到她的研究行为本身可能扭曲研究基金竞争，但她仍然相信如果她想知道教授怎么想的，直接询问他们就行了。但是，在言论和实际行为之间，在人们说的和实际做的之间是存在关键的区别。我觉得，当拉蒙讨论我所在的英语学科时，这种差别表现得最明显，但没有理由相信它不存在于其他学科。在采访英语学者时，拉蒙听到的是分裂和质疑的言论。一学者称赞“内部的自我批评是好的，非常健康的”，另一位学者说“在讨论问题时，有点自我意识、自我分析、自我质疑总是好事”，第三个承认“没有真正的，普遍同意的一套术语”。但这些学者都承认他们实际的做法是非常统一的、确定性的，而拉蒙却没有认真对待。一学者注意到，不管他和同事有什么样的冲突，他们在评定学生成绩时肯定是一致的。另一个注意到，尽管很难说优秀的学术研究有什么特征，但“当你看到它，你肯定不会错过它。”言论上分裂，实际行动上有共识，英语学科明显有规范和标准，虽然没有说出来。（实际上，其中一个规范就是坚持把精读作为一种方法，虽然几十年来一直认为它已经死了。实际上，精读如此持久，以至于过去十年来连弗兰克·莫瑞蒂（FrancoMoretti）最具挑衅性的学术著作中也呼吁“远方阅读”，这是实证性途径，要阅读大量本来可能不去阅读的非经典著作。

　　拉蒙的方法还有另外一个问题。与很多社会学家相比，拉蒙做的定性研究更多，但也确实做了很多实证性分析。在她进行访谈的时候，她听到的是经常被重复的话语。她承认评审员在谈论优秀课题时倾向于谈到清晰、质量、独创性、意义、可行性等，她认为这些构成了评价课题的通用语，一种让政治科学家能够和人类学家和哲学家对话的语言。拉蒙辨认出这些话语，并让研究助手把这些话变成密码，在把密码变成数据，然后对数据进行统计处理，所有这些都经过一个程序，这在她的附录中有详细的说明。有时候，拉蒙的统计数据穿过长期程式化辩论的噪音，揭示出任何一方都没有抓住的事实，当她显示学术背景下的多样性与公众想象的多样性没有多大关系。也就是说，一些评审员提到的“多样性”作为授奖的因素之一，但他们谈论的更可能是机构多样性（35%）或学科多样性（34%）而不是性别多样性（15%）或种族多样性（14%）。在有些时候，她的统计并没有显示这么多。我们并不会因为知道人文学者（68%）比社会学者（41%）更多提到清晰，或者所有小组成员的41%考虑申请者的道德品质，勤奋工作（31%）、谦恭（21%）、正宗真实性（19%）就更清楚知道教授是如何评审的了。判断的通用语太贫瘠，根本抓不住评审员在判断时实际使用的标准。

　　《教授怎么想》用丰富的细节令人信服地描述了同行评议问题。该研究除了向大学教授们保证同行评价基本上是公正的外，还可能激发有关评价社会学的进一步研究。毫无疑问，本书在学术界读者看来是非常有趣的。普通读者的感受会如何呢？他们对同行评价的兴趣远不如对笼统的大学评价更感兴趣。拉蒙集中在评价过程上的大学描述是苍白无力的，这确实令人感到奇怪。虽然她和对大学感到悲观，不过在尽工作职责的教授有些不同，但她没有能告诉我们那些工作到底是什么或为什么值得去做这些工作。有时候，拉蒙的采访抓住了真正的思想激情，如学者们滔滔不绝地称赞那些做他们最羡慕的工作的人时，或者结结巴巴地谈论他们所从事的工作中的内心喜悦。纯粹的智慧、绝对的愉悦或许很少见，但它们是人们进行学术研究的动机也是研究竭力要达到的目标。但这两者都无法通过同行评价的程序来获得。所以，虽然拉蒙的著作做了很多重要的事，但它没能告诉读者教授们在学术研究最佳状态时的真实想法。

　　译自：RateyourProfessorsbyAmandaClaybaugh

　　http：//www.nplusonemag.com/rate-your-professors

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