Comments on: Finding playmates

By: Tom Morris

Tom Morris — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 19:48:30 +0000

“Also, I’m not the right person to discuss Critical Legal Theory, but I suspect that it draws upon postmodern scholarship developed in other fields.” CLS has a fair share of different theory bases, feminism being relevant at the moment (in Britain anyway with the Ahluwahlia/Thornton cases). I attended the Critical Legal Conference at the University of Kent this year, and have a layman’s perspective here: http://www.bbcity.co.uk/entry/925

By: Jeffrey Atkinson

Jeffrey Atkinson — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 17:29:19 +0000

Collaboration in the physical/natural sciences can be a boon or a poison, but the relative effect of both has been changing for some time. When a newly minted PhD/post-doc gets their first faculty research position they were likely hired with an emphasis on their “promise” and how that individual will distinguish themselves as different from their mentors and supervisors. This has always been true. The trick more recently has been how to do this in a very competitive sub-discipline. Exciting areas of research are now often cross-disciplinary and require collaborations. No single researcher can muster the resources to effecetively attack interesting recalcitrant problems. So…when it comes time to assess how successful a new researcher is (say at tenure application) examiners are left to consdier just who did what. Is the newby running on the efforts of others or has he really distinguished his own work and intellectual effort. Once this hurdle is cleared then collaborations are common, desired, and (usually) productive. In the sciences, collaborations outside the discipline are quite rare in my experience and are often the hobby of senior people or emeriti.

By: paperwight

paperwight — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:53:28 +0000

I find this a bit surprising, as I was an attorney in Silicon Valley for a long time, and in fact, attorneys were encouraged to attend the technical conferences in the fields in which their clients operated, or in which they were interested. The law firms actively supported attendance at such conferences, certainly more than they would have their attorneys paying to attend some conference where other lawyers would tell them things that (a) they already knew, or (b) they could learn easily enough by keeping up with their reading.

By: jam

jam — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 01:45:46 +0000

As it happens I just got back from the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference in Boston. (By the way, it featured a panel with CT’s own Chris Bertram and The Virtual Stoa’s Chris Brooke, both on Rousseau and the General Will, which prompted a question from the floor: “To what extent do the two Chrises agree?” Brooke started to answer and Bertram interjected-jokingly, I hasten to add—”Nonsense.”) ASECS is more or less naturally interdisciplinary: musicologists, art historians, philosophers, historians, literatteurs, as long as they can relate to the (fairly broadly defined) 18th C, are all welcome. But there were some panels which were intentionally interdisciplinary. One of them was a panel put together (not just chaired) by Margaret Doody, which was originally to have been three practicing lawyers talking about legal issues in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa. There are a lot of them: Clarissa’s will, her grandfather’s will, the nature of the Harlowe family settlement, to name just three. They all matter terribly in the novel. And for Richardson scholars to discuss them with lawyers proved useful. Eszter’s point about different perspectives.

By: Ed Felten

Ed Felten — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:54:41 +0000

Since you’re speculating about why I got promoted, let me insert my own guess. And it’s only a guess, of course, because the process is confidential. My guess is that my cross-disciplinary work with lawyers did help me get promoted. It’s very likely that some of my outside promotion letters were written by lawyers. That said, it’s certainly true that extensive collaboration with lawyers is risky for a tenure-seeking computer scientist. Post-tenure, such calculations matter less.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 20:18:00 +0000

I think there’s truth in what Eszter’s written, but I would point out that legal scholarship has collaborated extensively with economics over the last few decades. Indeed, several law schools (and certain judges) are routinely criticized for relying too heavily upon this school of thought. Many practicing trial lawyers work with communication professionals and demographers in the field of jury analysis, but I don’t know whether that sort of thing yields much scholarship. Also, I’m not the right person to discuss Critical Legal Theory, but I suspect that it draws upon postmodern scholarship developed in other fields.

By: Mithras

Mithras — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 20:08:10 +0000

The link to Ed Felten’s blog doesn’t seem to work. It should be http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/, I think.

By: bryan

bryan — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 20:01:35 +0000

maybe there’s a correlation between how conceited about the importance of their own skillset the members of a particular group are and their inability to work with other groups.