Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship [Paperback]

Lindsay Waters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2004

Why should books drive the academic hierarchy? This controversial question posed by Lindsay Waters ignited fierce debate in the academy and its presses, as he warned that the "publish or perish" dictum was breaking down the academic system in the United States. Waters hones his argument in this pamphlet with a new set of questions that challenge the previously unassailable link between publishing and tenure.

As one of the most important and innovative editors in the humanities and social sciences, Waters has long witnessed the self-destruction occurring in the academic world because of the pressure to publish. Drawing upon his years of experience, he reveals how this principle is destroying the quality of educational institutions and the ideals of higher learning. It is time for scholars to rise up, Waters argues, and reclaim the governance of their institutions.

(20040915)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Eye-opening, deeply troubling, eloquent, and compelling."--Luc Sante, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and author of Low Life

(Luc Sante Luc Sante 20041216)

"Enemies of Promise is a humdinger about the crisis in academic publishing, where the ''publish or perish'' imperative has created towers of books that no one reads, even the professoriate. Author Lindsay Waters . . . paints an alarming picture of a bloated assembly line fueled by careerism and dedicated to mediocrity."--Bill Marx, WBUR Boston Public Radio

(Bill Marx WBUR Boston Public Radio 20040801)

"With great vigor, Enemies of Promise takes on the commericalization of the university generally and publishing specifically."--New York Times

(Russell Jacoby New York Times 20040409)

"Waters has done the world of ideas a service in writing about its infrastructure frankly, thoughtfully, and for the most part, readably . . . I recommend it to every academic, including scientists."--Times Higher Education Supplement

(Andrew Robinson Times Higher Education Supplement 20040101)

"Waters gives pained and expert attention to a major crisis in higher education. It is relevant not only to scholarly practise but to the conduct of academic publishers. The enemy is large and menacing, but the fight is a noble one."--Sir Frank Kermode

(Frank Kermode 20050524)

"A thought-provoking study of a different kind."--Irish Times
 

(Andreas Hess Irish Times 20070916)

"Lindsay Waters, executive editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, has issued a challenge to academics and publishers: to publish less, with more relevance. . . . Waters criticizes the ''publish-or-perish'' mentality that has produced an avalanche of books of little or no importance."--Estados



 

(Estados )

About the Author

Lindsay Waters is Executive Editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, where he has been since 1984. From 1978 to 1984, he was an editor at the University of Minnesota Press, where he developed the theory and History of Literature series. His books Against Authoritarian Aesthetics appeared in putonghua from Peking University Press in 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Prickly Paradigm Press; 1 edition (May 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972819657
• ISBN-13: 978-0972819657
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,136,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good critique of academic culture, December 12, 2007

By 

Khatarnaak Khatun (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship (Paperback)

A publisher at Harvard University Press, Waters is the right person to offer this critique. He ruthlesly criticizes the coroporate, quantifying mentality that has crept into academics, destroying the authority and prestige of scholarly book publishing.

The last chapter is the best to read. There are nice quotes such as "Thinking is not like watching a lightning storm but more like catching lightning bugs."

Unfortunately, the book is hobbled by its own old-fashioned views. Too many books are being published, true. But Waters is part of the problem. He begins by saying that he has "an inordinate love of books." Well, so do tenure committees. At inordinate and unhealthy levels.

He criticizes the academic's unwarranted garrulousness. But he doesn't realize that this worship of the book (good, bad or ugly) has origins in the West's worship of books, texts, great books and great authors, as displayed in his own comments that "works of art spring us forth into momentary glory" and that the function of the humanities is to connect us to "great works of art." Waters elsewhere makes much of his aesthetic preoccupations, but does not acknowledge how restricted his account of the aesthetic experience is. His account of aesthetic experience is a text-obsessed, cognition-oriented, book-loving version. Pure eurocentric high-culturalism.

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Dustbin of Academic Publishing, August 8, 2009

By 

K. Nishikawa (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship (Paperback)

Waters critiques the academy's current practice of hustling junior scholars into publishing their work, even when those scholars have very little of worth to say. His point is that the quality of scholarship has decreased in direct proportion to the quantity of publications the tenure process now demands. As the editor at a major U.S. academic press (Harvard UP), Waters is uniquely positioned to observe how professors' overpublishing practices mirror the profit-seeking motives of the corporate university.

Unfortunately, that distillation of Waters's argument takes up only about half of the book. The other half consists of a rather incoherent defense of vagaries such as "judgment," "the aesthetic," and "thinking." I see where Waters wants to go with this -- he is, after all, an unapologetic humanist. But I found his falling back on Romantic notions of art and criticism to be woefully out of step with his otherwise sound critique of the academic publishing industry. Indeed one of the ironies of his Byronesque defense of "valuable" scholarship is that his own book (running at under 100pp. and published by a major university press imprint) reads like one of the incidental, careless pieces of dross Waters so loudly condemns in university circles.