Engaged Philosophy and the Public Philosophy Network are partnering to present a special interview series that highlights the work of public philosophers who will be presenting at the 2019 PPN Conference Oct 17-19, 2019.
Christopher P. Long is Dean of the College of Arts & Letters and professor of philosophy at Michigan State University. Committed to culture change in higher education, his leadership focuses on creating trust through authentic interactions. As cofounder of The Public Philosophy Journal, public engagement permeates his scholarship.
What type(s) of public philosophy do you do?
My engagement in public philosophy primarily concerns practices of publishing and the habits of scholarship that inform these practices. My focus on publishing as a mode of public philosophy is animated by the belief that philosophy can only have a positive transformative effect in the world if its ideas appear in the public sphere in compelling and accessible ways. This commitment is what led to the founding of the Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ) which seeks to establish partnerships with publicly engaged individuals and organizations to make ideas public in ways that enrich public life. This approach is, in fact, deeply rooted in my own scholarship in Ancient Greek Philosophy. In a sense, Socrates remains the paradigm of the public philosophy that informs my work, although he rejected the technology of writing as a means of transforming public life. Happily, Plato did not follow his teacher in that regard! So, in this sense, perhaps my approach to public philosophy is more Platonic than Socratic in the end.
Give an example of a successful project.
Although I would identify the PPJ as a successful project, in all honesty its success is still very much an open question. At the heart of our efforts is a formative review process that encourages peer engagement that is trusting and committed to improve the quality of the submissions. In part, formative review involves cooperative engagements among academic contributors. But we also work to include members of the wider public as genuine partners in the creation new scholarship. For example, in the first few volumes of the PPJ, we have published essays on food ethics in which community activists served as co-authors, and on institutional injustice in the prison system for which an incarcerated individual served as a peer reviewer. Still, engaging in scholarship that is genuinely shaped by the public remains an exhilarating challenge.
What benefits does doing public philosophy offer to the public(s) you engage? What benefits does it offer you?
Orienting practices of publishing in philosophy toward broader and more deeply engaged audiences requires us to consider how to make sophisticated ideas accessible and relevant. A real benefit of doing public philosophy is that the public holds our work accountable. The PPJ’s formative review process asks readers to consider four aspects of a given submission: relevance, accessibility, intellectual coherence, and engagement with scholarly dialogue. These four criteria orient us to the concerns of the communities with which our ideas are intended to engage. Refining ideas for publication in a formative peer review process that is generous and collegial in nature has the capacity to enrich public life by including members of the public in the publishing process itself.
What role does the PPN play in your philosophical work? What role do you play in the PPN?
I have been a member of the Public Philosophy Network since soon after its founding in 2009. The PPN is a community of public philosophy practitioners that holds itself accountable to the question: How can philosophical engagement with various publics enrich public life? What I appreciate most about this community is its commitment to putting its ideas into practice with engaged members of the public who are themselves determined to redress pressing issues of public concern.
How does your department or institution support your public philosophy?
As the Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University, I spend a good deal of time working to more effectively integrate the research, teaching, and service dimensions of academic life into the land-grant mission of the university. Publicly engaged work is at the heart of this mission, and we need to develop more responsive and textured ways to recognize the impact this public scholarship has on the communities about which we care. One of the main goals of the Mellon-Foundation–funded HuMetricsHSS initiative I am helping to lead is to develop a values-based framework that will empower faculty to live out their core values in their academic research, teaching, and service. By intentionally aligning values and practices we hope to create supportive environments in which faculty, students, and staff can do their very best work.
What is your favorite quote and why?
Here is a quotation from James Baldwin that has become a kind of touchstone for me:
“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” – Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket
I return each day to this sentence from James Baldwin as a way of holding myself accountable to a commitment to putting values into practice. It is easy to talk about the core values of an academic life, but to change the culture of higher education¾to make it more caring, equitable, and responsive, we need to be intentional about how our policies and decision-making practices enact the values about which we care so deeply. Returning to Baldwin’s sentence each day serves as an insistent reminder that I need to embody the values for which I advocate.
What gets you out of bed in the morning? What is your passion?
The transformative power of education animates my life’s work. So, each day I have an opportunity to work with conscientious and caring faculty, students, and staff colleagues to enhance and expand the educational mission of the university is a gift. Ultimately, my engagement with public philosophy is rooted in a commitment to putting the transformative power of education into practice in ways that create a more just and meaningful world.
EngagedPhilosophy readers: If you’d like to nominate yourself or someone else for an interview, email us at info@engagedphilosophy.com.
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