During my interview for the Laidlaw Scholarship, I answered a question about the relationship between research and leadership. My response was to argue that cutting-edge research would eventually diffuse into public consciousness, turning what was once esoteric jargon into conventional praxis. Sitting here after gaining two years of experience – one in research, the other in community service – I still stand behind my claim that the forefront of academic research, while at times necessarily dense and complicated, need not be cordoned off from the laymen. However, I would like to take this opportunity to adumbrate in greater detail what it actually means for academic research to become accessible knowledge and, from this, how academics can be leaders both in their respective fields and in the public eye.
Knowledge can only become accessible if it is actively disseminated to the public; otherwise, it risks forever being relegated to the dusty bookshelves of university libraries. ‘Actively’ is the operative phrase here. The role of the academic or researcher is simultaneously scholar and activist; the knowledge they create places upon them a heteronomous mandate to make sure that this knowledge is turned from theory into praxis. To neglect this duty is what creates ‘indolent knowledge’; that is, a knowledge that is idle, inert, serving little more purpose than entertaining those big-book-bigots who sit in self-imposed hermitage clinging to the myopic notion that knowledge needs to be confined to a select few. To be an ethical leader, in my view, is to be a researcher-cum-leader. Like Plato’s philosopher king – without the hierarchical and paternalist undertones – the academic’s duty is to create knowledge and ensure it reaches the public. This could take the form of lectures, public presentations, or any other form of medium that effectively condenses, synthesizes, and distils research into understandable knowledge.
What this means in the realm of history - the world that I operate within – is that I must be both a public and academic historian. The new knowledge I create should be written with greater lucidity and brevity so that any informed or mildly interested dilettante can, at the very least, grasp the point I am trying to make. I will know I have succeeded as an academic if one day I receive an email, not from a colleague, but a student or another reader, saying, ‘I disagree’.