I opened to a page in the middle of a friend's book -- The Story of Libraries by Fred Lerner -- and found this quotation:
Dissertations . . . vary in readability from the merely turgid to the utterly incomprehensible. But they are often the most comprehensive and most recent investigations of a phenomenon . . . . (182)
Having written a dissertation, I winced a bit, but I know that the charge is often correct. Yet I don't think academic writing needs to be as bad as it is -- surely academics can learn to write a clear sentence, especially when they write for a general audience. And since academics should be leading investigators in their fields, then more academics should be able to write clear, informative pieces on pressing topics for wide audiences. This should be within reach, and with web publishing tools their best work should be available for readers in hours and days, not months and years.
So I'm working on our democracy publication to try to learn how to live up to those goals. I want to change the nature of academic publishing for some large number of my colleagues here at I. U. South Bend. On good days I imagine that this will change the university's relation to our community; I imagine that it will change our university. We'll see.
We launch shortly. PS. There will be student writing; there will be a weblog.
Lerner's book -- New York, Continuum, 1998.