What Have You Done For Us Lately? A Case Study in Public Impact.

Public scholarship must take precedence over prestige for the 21st century scholar. The public is echoing Janet Jackson’s refrain “what have you done for me lately?” to universities with wary gazes, wondering what their return on investment is. The insularity of academia’s prestige system: publishing in top peer-reviewed journals, departmental and university-wide awards, etc., are far from the “coin of the realm” when it comes to those standing outside of the ivory tower. People want to see universities in action and contributing to the public good by having their ears to the ground and having a clear mission about how it seeks to contribute to communities. 

Here’s a case in point.  A couple of years ago I wrote an op-ed on reparations in higher education for Black Americans who are descendants of chattel slavery. I knew the topic deserved public attention beyond what my dissertation or an academic peer-review journal cloaked in “academese” could offer. Simply, I felt compelled as an organic intellectual to write and present research in a way that wasn’t isolating and had real-world implication and application.

The fact that I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors in terms of academic job possibilities rarely fazed me, as the “R” word continues to be a third-rail issue in American politics. I could not bracket my personal life off from the topic. As a son of the South (Arkansas Delta, once removed), I had seen how the lack of resources had deprived entire families in small Arkansas Delta towns like Marvell or Elaine of living a life outside of survival. Also, my drive came from having survived my PhD program on dialysis, a subsequent kidney transplant, the death of my only sibling, and an adult diagnosis of neurodivergence. Having your life change so swiftly at a relatively young age changes your priorities. It was now or never for me to make this argument. All things considered, writing an op-ed on the possibilities of lineage-based reparations in the post-affirmative action landscape, didn’t seem like such a tall order. 

As I let go of my fears wondering what my advisor and dissertation committee would think, I asked myself: “Could you live with yourself if you didn’t write this?” I couldn’t. This project was bigger than me. I rejected the model of dispassionate reasoning, seeing all too often how this way of thinking operated among learned men who claimed objectivity. What I was doing, I reasoned, was for this descendant community that American society deemed unworthy of investment as it never followed through on a promise after the Civil War. It was the kind of clarity that cultivates courage to respond in a way that is material, not abstract.
 
That courage paid off in ways unexpected. A month after the op-ed was published, I received a contract to have the essay re-published in the textbook American Literature and Rhetoric (2nd edition) by Bedford, Freeman & Worth (an imprint of Macmillan Publishers). Later, I found out the essay would sit alongside public intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates, William Darity and Jason Riley in a section on contemporary takes on reparations. This was truly a teenage dream. I remember reading such anthologies in my AP English courses back in high school admiring names like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag and Joan Didion. This is legacy, and I am forever thankful that younger generations will be able to read about the nuances of an, unfortunately, enduring issue.  

Barely a week after my dissertation defense, the same op-ed was later cited in the American Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education Report 7-A-25, titled “Designation of Descendants of Enslaved Africans in America” as it argued for lineage status as a criterion for positive considerations in university admissions. Even though the committee decided that it was best for individuals to self-identify as a descendant (as there was no consensus among civil rights organizations about delineation), unlike the textbook inclusion, the nation’s largest medical organization moved the topic into policy adoption. It is exactly what I wanted my dissertation research to do. 

Unfortunately, it took me a while to internalize these accomplishments as they were minimized or met with silence from my department. I interpreted this lull as meaning that these external validations were a matter of course for a Ph.D. candidate writing for the public. Academia, through its insular system of validation, rendered my work “unserious” or a “distraction,” from the real goal—writing for other scholars. Sometimes academics are so consumed with checking off boxes for the next promotion, they lose track of why many of them wanted to be part of the guild—to make societal change. In the midst of my crises, I continually followed that north star.