Well, it’s been a week since I upped sticks from D.C. and started my new life as an academic in Ann Arbor. It’s been an eventful week, with the start of a several-month commute between my family who are still in Northern Virginia and Michigan, and beginning to find my feet in a new town, organization and position. But I think I’m going to enjoy it here. The move to academia does mark a major shift in my career however, and the start of a steep learning curve – almost as large as the one I faced when I moved to D.C. to take up my previous appointment.
Five years ago when I left government research to join the Woodrow Wilson Center in D.C., the culture-shock was jarring. This was a town populated by lawyers, lobbyists and policy wonks (a term I rapidly added to my vocabulary), where knowledge was power, and where politics was everything – a culture light-years from the cosy world of my lab back in Cincinnati. Within this baptism of fire I remember clearly a good colleague impressing on me the quip attributed to Harry Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog!”
At the time I thought it was rather cynical. Five years on, I know better!
I mention this because my first week in academia-proper (as opposed to those rather cloistered government labs) has been threaded through with another aphorism. Within the space of a few days, I’ve already lost count of how many people have noted that “academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so low!”
Now I’d hate for this perception to cloud my judgment, and I should note for the record that my first week at the University of Michigan has been overwhelmingly positive – people have been universally welcoming and helpful. But I must admit that there is an interesting dynamic here that is quite different to that in D.C. It seems – from first impressions at least – that academics are adept at jockeying for position within a complex intersection of groups and factions, and demonstrate a skill that would put a pack of wolves to shame. In political terms, it’s a little like trading the grand spectacle and backroom maneuvering of D.C. for bare-knuckle fighting – more Fight Club than Mr. Smith Goes To Washington! I suspect that’s partly due to the unique mix of bureaucracy, hierarchy and personal latitude that comes with the territory – I’m looking forward to it 
There was another reason why I turned to thinking about these two quotes though. Both of them are somewhat apocryphal. Truman’s “dog” quote seems to be traced back – at least in its most widespread form – to a 1989 article in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd. Widely attributed to Truman, Dowd seems to have played a pivotal role in its evolution. Similarly, the quote about academic politics is somewhat hard to pin down. It’s often attributed to Wallace Sayre, a political scientist at Columbia University, although Henry Kissinger is routinely associated with it. However, I was intrigued to see that the saying may have originally come from President Woodrow Wilson – a President who was no stranger to academia.
A rather neat piece of symmetry I thought as I move from an institution memorializing Woodrow Wilson, to one (possibly) immortalized by him!
No related posts.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Andrew: Welcome to academia! I have a technical question: In an article written by three people you know dealing with ultrafine particles, they say, “Nanosized materials, including fullerenes, occur naturally from combustion processes such as forest fires and volcanoes.” Is that correct? I thought fullerenes were ONLY man-made. Next, what do you think of the ENRES final report? In the manuscript I am still working on, I am going to call it state-of-the-art and I want your take on it. Thanks, Lewis Laska, Professor of Business Law, College of Business, Tennessee State University. (on leave)
Thanks Lewis.
Fullerenes and even carbon nanotubes can be found in carbonaceous material from combustion – not too surprising given that combustion allows carbon atoms to dissociate and re-assemble. But the quantity, nature and purity of these “natural” nanomaterials does not really compare with that of intentionally engineered stuff.
The ENRHES report (http://nmi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/project/ENRHES.htm) is certainly comprehensive, and a valuable reference source of up to date information on four classes of nanomaterial – carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, metals and metal oxides. State of the art? Quite possibly – but for how long, I don’t know. In the grand scheme of things, it complements many other information sources, but doesn’t necessarily supersede them.
A Google search for produces some interesting stuff about fullerenes from natural sources.