Becoming a Footnote

Sanford F. Schram

Description

How does a graduate student acquire the skills necessary to define a clear research agenda and write meaningful contributions to the scholarship in his or her field? Can the requirements of professional advancement in the ivory tower be reconciled with making a difference in the bare-knuckle world of policymaking? Can even a celebrated activist-scholar survive the seemingly relentless neoliberalization of higher education? Becoming a Footnote takes the reader on an inspirational journey through the experiences of researcher Sanford F. Schram, illuminating how he overcame his early insecurities and limitations, particularly about his writing, to develop into someone cited by both scholars and people involved in the policymaking process. With wit and humor, Schram illustrates how his award-winning research on race, poverty, and welfare emerged from the political struggles in which he was immersed, and how we all have something unique to contribute if we commit ourselves to making it happen.
Preface
Introduction

1. How I Had Four Majors in College

2. Going Postal, Getting Drafted: How I Ended Up in Graduate School

3. How I Learned To Read

4. I Went Down to the Crossroads: Activism and Scholarship

5. Standing on Shoulders: Scholarship as Networking

6. Theory and Practice: Research and the Court

7. Is Anybody Listening? Testifying before Congress

8. Calling Out Racial Bias: Images, Words, and Numbers

9. The Deep Semiotic Structure of Deservingness: Enduring Identities in Dependency Discourse

10. Three Heads Are Better than One: Collaboration, Mixed Methods, and Disciplining the Poor

11. Moving On: Turning To Europe

12. Making It Matter: Real Social Scene in the Neoliberal Academy

Conclusion: A Postscript on Writing

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Memoir
• Education
• Central
• National

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438447766
• Langue: English

Extrait

BECOMING A FOOTNOTE
SUNY series in New Political Science

Bradley J. Macdonald, editor
BECOMING A FOOTNOTE
An Activist-Scholar Finds His Voice, Learns to Write, and Survives Academia

SANFORD F. SCHRAM
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
Published by S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schram, Sanford.
Becoming a footnote : an activist-scholar finds his voice, learns to write, and survives academia / Sanford F. Schram.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4775-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-4774-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Schram, Sanford. 2. Social scientists—United States—Biography. 3. Political activists—United States—Biography. 4. College teachers—New York (State)—Biography. 5. Scholars—United States—Biography. 6. Social sciences—Study and teaching. 7. Social problems—Study and teaching. I. Title.
H59.S34 2013
300.92—dc23
[B]
2012041978
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Michal McCall My Everlasting Colleague
Exactly how you hear it, is exactly how it all went down, it was later in the evening that the facts and figures got turned around.
—John Mayer, “Stitched Up”
CONTENTS

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
How I Had Four Majors in College
CHAPTER TWO
Going Postal, Getting Drafted: How I Ended Up in Graduate School
CHAPTER THREE
How I Learned To Read
CHAPTER FOUR
I Went Down to the Crossroads: Activism and Scholarship
CHAPTER FIVE
Standing on Shoulders: Scholarship as Networking
CHAPTER SIX
Theory and Practice: Research and the Court
CHAPTER SEVEN
Is Anybody Listening? Testifying before Congress
CHAPTER EIGHT
Calling Out Racial Bias: Images, Words, and Numbers
CHAPTER NINE
The Deep Semiotic Structure of Deservingness: Enduring Identities in Dependency Discourse
CHAPTER TEN
Three Heads Are Better than One: Collaboration, Mixed Methods, and Disciplining the Poor
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Moving On: Turning To Europe
CHAPTER TWELVE
Making It Matter: Real Social Science in the Neoliberal Academy
CONCLUSION
A Postscript on Writing
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
PREFACE

In the fall of my freshman year at St. Lawrence University, my English professor gave me an F on my Mary McCarthy paper. (The war in Vietnam was in full swing at the time, and McCarthy had chosen to write eloquently on the subject. We read her as much for her prose as her politics.) That professor constantly challenged me to wake up, see what was happening in the world, and learn to find my voice to speak and write about it. The grade was its own wake-up call about my writing abilities. I eventually became that professor’s colleague at nearby Potsdam College of the State University of New York where she was subsequently positioned; and she had continued to edit my writing over the years. Recently, when I saw her for dinner in Washington, D.C. (while I was in town to make a presentation at a conference), I told her that I thought I probably would have never learned to write if not for her. She responded by saying: “No, you would have learned to write…eventually.” She had a point: I was not a good writer, but over time, the more you write, the better writer you become. And I cannot stop writing. I love getting to express myself in the hopes that I can contribute to understanding and knowledge. I want to make a difference. I feel strongly that everyone has something distinctive to contribute; they just need to be encouraged to find what it is that they can add. I say this not to minimize the obstacles many of us confront. Nonetheless, while social position or economic circumstance can make it harder for some as opposed to others, I strongly believe that each of us can be supported to find our voice and develop the skills to make a contribution. As an educator, this is the philosophy that informs my work.
What follows is the story about my own journey to find my voice and develop the ability to express it in writing. It is a story with a number of dimensions: the personal and the political, the substantive and the stylistic. Yet, it is primarily the story about overcoming my deficiencies to become a published scholar. Given the time period covered, it is not anachronistic to invoke that slogan from Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s: the medium is the message. I detail how I learned to write as well as report on how I came to write what I did. I guess my thinking is that if others learn that someone who got an F can do it, so can they.
INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 2000, a time that now seems idyllic, I was a member of a faculty contingent from my school (Bryn Mawr) that attended a two-week retreat at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, focused on issues of multiculturalism in the academy. We were assigned classes where faculty from different participating schools exchanged ideas on the topic. One day, the instructor of my class (a young but thoughtful female political scientist) asked us to engage in yet another exercise designed to get us to be more forthcoming about the issue. We were, like most students, not always quick to express ourselves. We were a diverse group ourselves, men and women, younger and older faculty from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, and we needed time to get comfortable talking about ourselves to each other. We were getting better at engaging the topic and talking openly about sensitive issues, but we still benefited from these solicitations. This exercise has stayed with me: we were asked to write on both sides of blank 3x5 cards and hang them around our necks. On the first side, we were to write how we thought people saw us and on the other side how we saw ourselves. Then each of us in turn was to reveal to the group what we had written. On the first side, I wrote “New York intellectual Jew”; on the other, “former letter carrier.”
When my turn came, folks were chuckling. I looked the part of the New York Jew: short, bald, grey beard, and nervous (Woody Allen without glasses). But in the discussion that followed, no one asked me about being a New Yorker, let alone a Jew or an intellectual (and this was understandable since several others in the class already, it seemed, knew way too much about these identities). What my classmates really wanted to talk about was what it was like to be a letter carrier and what were the issues of diversity in my postal workplace. While the letter carrier seemed an obscure and marginal identity in this context, I relayed that it was actually a source of some status in the post office: letter carriers spent most of the day on their own, outside, unsupervised, and they got paid slightly more than clerks. Letter carriers, in fact, had a special status in the post office.
Despite that, I was not a letter carrier for long (just a few years) before I left for graduate school (escaping the racism of co-workers, and after getting suspended for refusing to cut my hair or sign a loyalty oath during the Vietnam War, while still under a cloud for previously being a participant in the Great Postal Wildcat Strike of 1970 that was centered in New York City and surrounding New Jersey before eventually spreading to other parts of the country—all acts performed against the wishes of my letter carriers’ union local president, who was also my father). While sitting in that class with my faculty colleagues, my blue collar existence seemed in retrospect way more left-wing than teaching college. And so it was.
Years later, while out jogging, I ran into one of my doctoral students who was coming the other way, and, using the excuse to stop exercising, we started talking about prospects for a career in the academy upon completion of that student’s nearly finished dissertation. The student had a business background and wanted to switch careers and become an academic, but was now getting a bit uncertain about it in the face of learning way too much about academic politics (admittedly my fault). I counseled the student not to worry, that in fact there was a big difference between business and the academy: business was cutthroat; the academy was backstabbing. Not exactly reassuring, but I would like to feel it was edifying. (The student completed the dissertation and adjuncts while keeping the business job.)
It is true that my academic career has had its own unique ups and downs. I ended up a visiting professor at Bryn Mawr College, spending sixteen years as a full-time, full professor, with sabbaticals and all, but no tenure. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) would eventually write in complaint about this, but to no avail, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education. 1
Nonetheless, although I struggled with what I saw as the injustice of that appointment, I have, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed a career that has allowed me the opportunity to teach and engage in research. I have especially loved having the opportunit