|
Applications are being accepted for next spring’s Gustafson Seminars,
in which the topic will be “Scholarship, Entrepreneur-ship and the
Corporatization of the Academy,” according to Gustafson fellow Laurie
Patton.
Patton, associate professor and chair of the Department of Religion, said
the theme grew out of past topics—such as “Disciplines in Disarray”
and “The Fate of Scholarly Writing”—and touches on many
of the same issues that will be addressed in next April’s Sam Nunn
Policy Forum, being organized by Candler Professor of Psychology Don Stein.
“When disciplines are in disarray, much of that comes from outside
pressures—including pressures from the corporate world, from funding
organizations—to move in one direction or another,” Patton said.
Launched in 1998, the Gustafson Seminars are the intellectual heirs to
the Luce Seminar, which former Woodruff Professor James Gustafson headed
from 1987–96 to provide an interdisciplinary forum for faculty to
explore how issues of academia cut across and between fields. Each year,
three Gustafson fellows organize the seminar, select participants from
the application pool and lead the discussions.
Joining Patton as Gustafson fellows are Richard Rothenberg, professor
of family and preventive medicine in the School of Medicine, and Steve
Walton, assistant professor of decisions and information analysis in the
Goizueta Business School. The trio of disparate scholars anticipates a
lively intellectual discussion next semester that will touch on numerous,
and perhaps unexpected, implications of corporate influence on the academy.
“The fact that commercialization is taking place is something that
pervades the University but is particularly significant in the medical
school,” Rothenberg said. “Medical research leads to patents,
to all sorts of potentially commercially useful materials. All of that
is right up front in the medical school, frequently much more than in
other [disciplines], where the product isn’t as obvious.”
“What kind of access do you grant companies into a campus, and what
does that mean?” Walton said. “For example, Coca-Cola is very
active on our campus. In the business school, we do research into company
performance and decisions that drive company performance; what if we find
that Coca-Cola did something wrong? Are we shackled by a potential conflict
of interest?”
Each of the three fellows—along with each of the dozen or so faculty
chosen to participate during the spring seminar—will bring a unique
scholarly perspective to the table, and that is exactly why the Gustafson
Seminars were created in the first place. Walton said he relishes the
opportunity to trade ideas with professors about whose disciplines he
knows little.
“There are two things that can happen [in interdisciplinary settings],”
he said. “One is you simply can’t share a common language and
you get nowhere. The other is that you’ve got enough common ground
so that you can start a dialogue, and it’s the differences that make
everything interesting. We’re that second type. I’ve never thought
about Hindu or Buddhist philosophy, and I know almost nothing about Rich’s
work, but [Patton’s and Rothenberg’s] perspectives on how business
and the academy interact are challenging for me.”
Patton, who is in the final year of a three-year appointment as a Gustafson
fellow, said she and her colleagues will decide on seminar participants
in late November. Interested faculty should contact Patton via e-mail
at lpatton@emory.edu.
|
