Relevant Universities

10 March 2010

A superb blog posting by Anthony Grafton over at the New York Review of Books on the managerial crisis facing university research in the humanities. Around the world, not just in Britain where Grafton concentrates his focus, universities are under pressure to cut positions and research funds in the humanities because they are “not productive” and don’t attract grant money.

As usual, universities are twenty years behind the power curve in what is hip and trendy. They are only now adopting the downsizing and ruthless cost-cutting that was all the rage among corporations in the early 1990s. Now that the business world has realized that this was probably a mistake (or at least that they went too far, cut too deeply, and placed their continued viability in danger), the universities are latching on to these discredited ideas of management. (At UC Berkeley, for example, as a “cost-cutting” measure the university removed the phones from professors’ offices in the English and other humanities departments—but not those of science or engineering professors. Of course, now they are paying people to walk from office to office, knocking on doors, creating delays when people cannot be found, etc. and costing the school a lot more money in lost time and unproductive labor. These are the management wizards who are telling universities how to succeed.)

You never know what fields will be suddenly be relevant. Take the example of paleography which Grafton cites. We are in the midst of an information revolution. We are transitioning from a culture based on the printed word to one of electronically stored information. This will have deep and profound implications for every aspect of our lives. So much so, that we really can’t imagine what the world will look like in 50 years. (Remember Bill Gates’s 1995 book The Road Ahead, the one about coming technologies that gave short shrift to the internet? And that was from one of the most technically plugged-in guys on the planet.) It would be useful to look at the last time we experienced such an upheaval in the way we stored and distributed information—when we moved from a manuscript culture to one of print. And to do this, you are going to need paleographers and medievalists. The modes of information transmission in a manuscript culture are eerily similar to those of the digital culture in a lot of ways; there are differences too, and the two are by no means the same, but we’ve got a lot to learn from the pre-Gutenberg days as we move into the 21st century.

Now there are rumors (I don’t know if they’re true or not), that Google has hired several medievalists to help advise them on what the transformation to a digital culture might be like. It is patently obvious that cutting such positions right now is a stupid move for a university. It’s probably not a good idea at any time, but it’s egregiously stupid right now. This is especially so given that humanities research is dirt cheap. The money lost through mismanagement of equipment procurement in the sciences at a major university could probably fund the entire English department.

This is not to say that reform of the humanities may not be needed and that all change is bad. The field of literary criticism, for example, lays waste to entire forests in publishing a lot of nonsensical or, once the jargon is stripped away, glaringly obvious and trivial research. (I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent puzzling out the meaning from a blizzard of buzzwords in a published paper only find my reaction when finally discovering what is being said is, “duh!") The best of literary criticism, however, does not do this and is extremely insightful and relevant to understanding the human condition. But improving methods for separating the wheat from the chaff is not something that “management experts” will do for the universities. Metrics can be useful, but you have to use the right metrics. The current “marketability” of a particular field of research is not at all relevant to the long-term value and utility of that field.

The idea that the university can take a long view without being subject to the vicissitudes of the marketplace is precisely the value that such schools bring to society. If we only want research that is marketable today, then we should turn all the universities into trade schools and let corporations do all the research.

Exact Synonyms: Do They Exist?

6 March 2010

Erin McKean has a nice piece in the Boston Globe on spelling variations and people’s tendency to assign slightly different meanings to variants; an omelette, to use one of McKean’s examples, is considered by some to be tastier and a finer dining experience than a mere omelet. (It might be interesting to see a study of the spellings of omelet/te in various restaurant menus, coded for economic scale, from greasy spoons to 5-star restaurants to see if this particular distinction is generally made.)

Beyond just variant spellings though, it is common for individuals and particular groups to apply very precise meanings to certain words; an artilleryman, for example, will go to great lengths to tell you difference between a howitzer and a gun (a howitzer is a low-velocity, high-trajectory weapon used for indirect fire, while a gun is a high-velocity, low-trajectory weapon and is often used in a direct fire mode where the gunner can see his target), and ichthyologists use the plural forms fish and fishes differently (fish is many individuals; fishes is many species). But to the random person on the street, there is no difference between fish and fishes, and howitzers are guns (although not all guns are howitzers).

There is nothing wrong with making such distinctions in your writing. Just don’t assume that your readers (or the author if you are the one doing the reading) make the same distinction. In general usage, such words are interchangeable and relying on your particular distinction being commonly understood is a sure road to misunderstanding.

Coining & Copyrighting: “Hurt Locker”

5 March 2010

Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver is suing the producers of the academy-award-nominated film The Hurt Locker, claiming that the film is actually a biographical account of his exploits as a bomb-disposal expert in Iraq and that he deserves compensation. I have neither the legal expertise nor the factual knowledge to judge the merits of whether or not the film’s main character represents Sarver, but Sarver and his lawyer are also making a couple of linguistic claims. Sarver is also claiming to have coined the phrase hurt locker, and according to the Detroit News, his lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, says he has “copyrighted” the phrase.

Alas, it appears as if these linguistic claims are utterly without merit.

Ben Zimmer quickly disposes the canard that Sarver coined the phrase hurt locker, which means a state of mental and/or physical pain. The term dates to the Vietnam war and is (probably) older than Sarver himself. An Associated Press story from 27 July 1967 says:

Then old Charlie opens up with those damned AK47 assault rifles, and, whammo, we were really in the hurt locker.

But the Detroit News also says the the lawyer Fieger also claims that Sarver “copyrighted” the term. This mistaken idea of copyright appears again and again in the press, almost never with any skepticism or correction. This is particularly shocking given that reporters are professional writers and anyone who makes a living as a writer should know the basics of copyright law—the Associated Press Style Manual even includes a section on “media law” that contains what reporters need to know about the subject. Now it’s not clear if Fieger actually said this or if the reporter is putting words in his mouth. (In the article, the statement is not enclosed in quotation marks.) If Fieger actually did say this, Sarver ought to start looking for another lawyer, because it would be clear that Fieger doesn’t know his basic copyright law. In any case, the reporter and editors are wrong to uncritically reproduce the statement.

First, in current law, copyright is not an active process which you have to take steps to secure. If you produce a work (a bit of writing, a performance, a piece of music, etc.), it is automatically copyrighted, no further action required. You don’t even have to label it as copyrighted. You can register a copyright (in the United States it is with the Library of Congress), but this does not change the status of copyright; it only improves your chances of winning a case if someone infringes on your copyright by offering evidence that you did indeed create the work in question. So to say he “copyrighted” a work is not incorrect, but it gives a false impression of the facts.

Second, you cannot copyright a word or phrase. Entire creative works are copyrighted, not individual words or phrases contained within it. (You can’t copyright a title, either.) So even if you do coin a word or phrase (which Sarver clearly did not), you cannot prevent other people from using that coinage.

Now you can trademark a word or phrase. But, to enforce a trademark and prevent others from using it, you have to have a business or product that uses the trademarked term as a name or as a feature (such as a t-shirt with the phrase written across the chest). And you can only prevent others from using the trademarked term in competing products—you cannot prevent general use of the term in day-to-day language or in business or products unrelated to your own. The purpose of trademarks is to reduce confusion between competing products through clear labeling and your enforcement of the trademark is similarly limited.

It’s about time that journalists took the time to learn the basic rules about how they can protect their creations and revenue streams (they don’t need to become intellectual property lawyers, but they do need to know the basics if they are going to call themselves “professionals"), and then write and edit their articles to accurately reflect reality. If Fieger said that Sarver had “copyrighted” the term, the reporter should have called him on it, questioning the lawyer’s veracity and competence. At the very least, the editor should have caught the error and deleted it from the article. 

Salisbury Cathedral Inscription

4 March 2010

Conservators at Salisbury Cathedral in England have, literally, uncovered the oldest known English-language inscription in a church. The inscription, believed to date to the 15th century, was found behind a monument that had been erected around 1660. Of course, the in a church is key; there are many examples of older English inscriptions (not to mention manuscripts) going back many centuries before this one, but they are not in churches. Cathedral inscriptions of this era are typically in Latin, not English.

Another cool aspect to the story is that the cathedral is applying a 21st century solution to deciphering the partially-legible inscription: crowd-sourcing. They’ve put photos of the inscription on the web and are encouraging the public, especially those who are paleographically inclined, to help in determining what the inscription says.

A Daily Mail article on the inscription is here. The Salisbury Cathedral press release, with links to more photos, is here.