The Death of the Book Review?

Over at Open University, there was (a few months ago) much discussion about what constitutes a good book review. Many of the conclusions seem obvious, but they bear repeating: in an environment, both academic and recreational, where far more interesting books are published than any one person could ever read, a good book review section can do much in filling in the gaps of public knowledge.

David Greenberg reports today that the Atlanta Journal Constitution is doing away with book reviews. This is undoubtedly a shame. Not only do book reviews fill in gaps in public knowledge, they can also highlight things that we really ought to be reading. It is sad that valuable content is increasingly seen as expendable – but then again, the number of people who buy a newspaper for its books section is decidedly limited.

Nevertheless, surely there is a simple solution these days. The Internet has allowed many gaps in markets to be filled, particularly as it has opened the prospect of publishing ones work to a large audience. Assembling a high quality team of reviewers may take time, and it takes no small effort to publicise a blog to the point that it becomes worthwhile. But if the decline of the book review is to be lamented, why not arrest the decline? After all, a slightly longer than average blog post is more or less the ideal length for a book review – long enough to highlight the interesting points of the book to whet the reader’s appetite, but not so long that the writer succumbs to the temptation to suggest what he would have written himself in the same situation. Moreover, a good group blog would have the immeasurable benefit of considerable eclecticism. It’s easy to lament the decline of the book review, but with the opportunities of the modern world, it’s a deficiency that could easily be solved.

The Use of Titles

There’s been a minor skirmish in Oxford recently, with a group of students calling themselves Student Action for Refugees(STAR) campaigning to have a professor sacked on account of his links to the anti-immigration think tank MigrationWatch.

The group, Student Action for Refugees (STAR), believes Professor David Coleman is bringing the University into disrepute by using his academic title to legitimise his views in the media.

The petition calls upon the University to “consider the suitability of Coleman’s continued tenure as a Professor of the University, in light of his well-known opinions and affiliations relating to immigration and eugenics.”

It cites his role as Honorary Consultant for the think-tank MigrationWatch UK, an anti-immigration think tank, and notes that he is currently a member of the Galton Institute, a charity that conducts research into eugenics.

The point I want to pick up on is the idea that Professor Coleman is using his title to give his views credibility in the media. For the article in question resolutely fails to mention that Professor Coleman is a professor of demography, and thus his professional expertise is very much concerned with questions of immigration. Indeed, his position is such that from the point of view of an ordinary member of the public, he could reasonably be expected to have a greater knowledge of issues surrounding patterns of migration and may well be able to shed extra light thereon.

The students may have had a point if Professor Coleman was a professor of mathematics, and was merely using his title as a vehicle for promoting his own views. For there’s a clear difference in terms of academic integrity in using your title to comment on matters of relevance to your area of study, and using it to bestow legitimacy on an area on which you are not necessarily more informed than the gentleman on the Clapham omnibus.

For their part, the media should disclose as much as possible when introducing a guest. That way, Professor Bloggs, Wilberforce Professor at Gladstone University can be clearly shown to have a knowledge pertinent to a discussion of the abolition of the slave trade, but may have less specific knowledge when dealing with questions of science policy. After all, it still wouldn’t be invalid for Professor Bloggs to seek to comment on any issue that he wanted, should he be able to find an organ willing to publish his views. But full disclosure of academic expertise allows the reader to decide with how much salt they want to take the political opinion expressed.

As far as STAR are concerned, it worries me that their sole basis for their campaign against Professor Coleman is based upon his political opinions. After all, what they are arguing is that someone whose opinions they disagree with has no place at their university. That sets a worrying precedent – university is supposed to be a place where all viewpoints are welcome, but only those that can stand up to academic rigour succeed. You cannot succeed at a university by closing your mind to opinions you don’t want to hear – you have to challenge them head on. Use proof and evidence to back up your assertions, and above all trust that the principles of scholarship, of dispassionately surveying the evidence at hand, will allow your research to stand up where others fall.

If STAR believe that Professor Coleman’s academic integrity is placed at risk because of his political opinions, then they should be able to demonstrate the flaws in his published work. If they come to equally or more plausible conclusions on the topics concerned, then they should confront Prof Coleman’s works academically. Instead, they are simply trotting out the last resort of the lazy undergraduate – the ad hominem attack. I’m pretty sure there are thorough refutations of Coleman’s work. But it would be nice if supposedly the brightest undergrads in the world could cite them, rather than relying on their own petty prejudice.