Structural solutions. A colleague returns from a conference having heard an administrator of a university press or academic journal say that they're no longer going to publish pieces that don't work out the public policy implications of the research at hand. In other words, academics are often perfectly happy to do their interesting research, write it up for other academics, and then assume that it will trickle down to those who might actually be able to use it to think about the world they work in every day. Will it need to be transformed to be useful? No matter, somebody will attend to that. Will it need to be translated out of jargon? Not my problem.

So they're not going to publish works that skip that public policy step, we hear. This is an excellent small, maybe not so small, structural improvement in the academy, making it more likely that we'll learn the rhetorical skills necessary to engage a wider audience. Others at the conference were looking for ways to make public intellectual work and activism a respected path for academics needing tenure and promotion -- they want to create a body of materials that a university can build into its faculty codes to make this part of the structure of the faculty job. Again, take up the good activity and make it part of the body of the institution, not just something a few on the edge do in their spare time or at risk to their careers.

A further rumor from the conference: a press that seeks out writers doing interesting research that could be useful for a wider public, and proposing to them that they do a book for that wider audience, helping them conceive of a book version of their work and seeing it through to publication by aggressive and supportive editorial guidance. This too is a structural change. [0 & P]