The academic climate

If academics were serious about climate change, we'd stop flying so much.

A mid-level academic likely attends at least one major conference a year, maybe two. She might get invitations to speak a few times a year. Folks who are in greater demand as well as those hoping to get their work before more audiences will fly more than this. In 2007 I went to South America twice, the UK once, and Europe three times. I also flew domestically, but didn't count those.

A department running a search might bring in anywhere between two and ten job candidates. Conversely, a hot candidate might have fifteen or so interviews.

And let's not forget the academic couples that can't get positions close to each other. In some instances, one or the other flies every weekend.

This adds up to lots of miles in the air, lots of emissions.

What would an academic no-fly zone or list look like?

For starters, academics would have to get rid of the notion that the expert is the one from far away. They'd have to cultivate awareness of the work of people who are close by, work more collaboratively with colleges and universities in their neighborhoods.

What about ending small meetings, the small expert, invitation only conferences that solidify networks and often lead to edited volumes or special issues of journals?  What about ending mega-conferences, the huge national and international conferences of over 5000 people? Are these really necessary? No one goes to every panel when 70 are scheduled at the same time. No one even attends all the panels in their speciality. No one even has face time with all the people they want to meet. Sure, it's fun to meet with friends, to see what scholar x looks like close up. But many complain about the big meetings anyway--they are impersonal, meat-markets, degrading, and, well, big.

A number of groups and associations already post papers online in advance of a meeting. There have also been multiple efforts, of varying degrees of success, at holding online or virtual conferences (whether through text based interactions or in Second Life, whether in real time or over the space of several months).

Admittedly, it's not the same. The demands of everyday life intrude and make it hard to spend hours in front of the computer. But, hey, many of us already do this (we are bloggers, after all). Colleges and universities could acknowledge and facilitate e-conference days. Here they might encourage small groups' participation and interaction online. (I'm not explaining this well. But in March, seven members of my department flew from upstate NY to San Francisco for academic meetings. With e-meetings, we could have been in a smart classroom, on screens, but also communicating with each other f2f and in real time. Likewise, folks from other schools that are close by (in Rochester, Ithaca, Syracuse) could have met up, again, having a mini f2f conference alongside the bigger one on the west coast.

We could eliminate the campus visit for job candidates. Job candidates could post their jobtalks on YouTube. Search committees would be forced actually to read the writing samples.There could be online interviews. Again, many places already do phone interviews as part of the search.

What will be interesting: the ways that academics fail to act responsibly, the ways we won't give up our travel and our meetings. Business people are much worse than we are. Scholarship requires meeting with other people. Good ideas need to be presented and defended. How can we stay up with our fields? The real answer, though, is we enjoy it. Flying around makes us feel important.

Comments

[Adrian]

I’d love to see the academic jet-setting climate cooled down but I don’t think it’ll happen because flying is such a libidinal aspect of academic subjectivity and the business class culture it presupposes. I think Ivan Illich hit the nail on the head when he argued that speed of travel has become the major determinate of social classification and the types of subjectivities or communities that can operate. I'd encourage academics never to go to a conferences that are beyond two days of train travel or on the bike, but thats me being a puritanical twit. In Australia, there is an expectation that phd candidates must travel massive distances to the US or UK to present papers at a mega conference if they have any hope of being successful and getting a job. Usually they only have funding for one trip. It's similar to the experience of the would-be actor moving to Hollywood in the fantasy of being discovered. One goes to a conference to hang out at cool parties, networks with the right people, but in the end is lucky if there are more than 10 people in their session and if anyone actually gives them good feedback on their work.

[No fly.]

Great post.

[Michael]

Well said. This kind of thinking is long overdue. I agree with Adrian's assessment, too: the illusion of a jet-set lifestyle is one of the few perks to a workforce otherwise battered to near death. But that's no excuse, especially when there are plenty of alternatives nowadays. I took the train from the UK, rather than flying, to conference in Belgrade, and it was lovely and only fractionally more expensive. But you're right, the real possibilities lie in the Internet and e-communications.

It'll happen if enough of us want it to. Thanks for a great post!

[Jodi]

Thanks, folks. I agree that this will be hard to change. And I have worries about sorts of changes. The e-solutions I gesture to can be scary in a university of Phoenix, long-distance learning, elimination of all f2f interactions that ultimately end up in the classroom sort of way.

[sol]

"Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don' understand. The vast terminal has been erected to examine our souls.
It is not surprising, therefore, to see men with submachine guns, to see vultures squatting on the baggage vehicles set at the end of the tarmac...
All of this we chose to forget. We devise a counter-system of elaborate forgetfulness. We agree on this together.....But the experience is no less deep because we've agreed to forget it"
Don DeLillo, The names, p 254