Notes from the Field | Sabine Frühstück and Morgan Pitelka, Response to Diamant & Bender, Where Are All the College Faculty?
Ed. Note: This statement by Journal of Japanese Studies Co-Editors Dr. Sabine Frühstück and Dr. Morgan Pitelka is written in response to the recent CAS Commentary Board Note from the Field “Where Are All the College Faculty? Editorial Inequity in East Asian Studies Journals” by Dr. Neil Diamant and Dr. Shawn Bender. See another response from Japan Forum Chief Editor Dr. Hannah Osborne.
Critical analyses of intellectual fields—questions, players, institutions, and tools—are important for understanding how knowledge is produced, what the limitations of its production might be, and how blind spots and biases could be addressed. We would like to direct CAS readers’ attention to two recent successful attempts of this sort in the (English-language) Asian Studies field: Christopher Goto-Jones and L. P. Hartley examined the place of Japanese philosophy in the history of philosophy in an article titled, “If the Past is a Different Country, Are Different Countries in the Past? On the Place of the Non-European in the History of Philosophy,” that was published in the journal Philosophy (vol. 80, no. 311, January 2005, pp. 29–51). Most of us would not be surprised to read that the answer is pretty much “no” and the finding that the place of Japanese philosophy in the history of philosophy is miniscule. Julia Adeney-Thomas looked for Japan’s place in history, posing the question about what matters and what doesn’t slightly differently in an article titled, “Why Do Only Some Places Have History? Japan, the West, and the Geography of the Past,” published in Journal of World History (vol. 28, no. 2, June 2017, pp. 187–218). It turns out that no matter where one teaches or learns history around the world, the history of Japan and of Asia occupies few experts and little time in university classrooms.
Enter “Where Are All the College Faculty? Editorial Inequity in East Asian Studies Journals” by Neil Diamant and Shawn Bender. Diamant and Bender have examined a handful of East Asian Studies journals’ editorial boards wondering who serves on them and what their composition might say about the stratification of the English-language world of East Asia experts. Their key claim is that, vis à vis faculty at research institutions, college faculty (meaning faculty who teach at private liberal arts colleges of the kind found primarily in the United States) are underrepresented on journal editorial boards. The Journal of Japanese Studies was included in their selection along with Japan Forum, The China Quarterly, Modern China, and The Journal of Asian Studies. As coeditors we are keen to share our perspective on the authors’ findings in the hope that a broader conversation might ensue.
“Diversification of all kinds has been on the agenda of JJS for a while and we are proud to have made some significant progress, particularly in recent years.”
Diversification of all kinds has been on the agenda of JJS for a while and we are proud to have made some significant progress, particularly in recent years. In our remarks, we include both the editorial and advisory boards in our response because both sets of scholars are hugely important to JJS and leaving out the advisory board is ill-aligned with how the journal functions. Had the authors included in their analysis editorial and advisory boards representation over the last five or ten years, they would have immediately noticed JJS’s diversification with regards to field of study, gender, ethnicity, institutional affiliation, and geographical breadth. In short, while not making a big official deal of it, JJS has begun to diversify in unprecedented ways and we are committed to doing yet more.
We sympathize with the authors’ statement that service on such boards is “both a marker of professional status and a measure of power and authority.” Of course, we strive to include people who have done good work and are, thus, in the position to make informed decisions about who should be asked to review a particular submission, whether a particular submission is suitable or whether a submission will likely make it through the review process. How could it be any other way? As for the “measure of power and authority,” we don’t share the authors’ conception of power. Power is relational. As long as authors attribute “power and authority” to JJS or any journal, its editors, the members of its board, and the authors whose work gets published in the journal, publishing in JJS will continue to symbolically enhance their own status. By the same token, if the best and the brightest decided that JJS doesn’t represent “power and authority,” they will go somewhere else. So, yes, that’s roughly how “reputation” and “status” work.
We also propose a more nuanced perspective on the authors’ statement that “boards decide what kinds of research gets published and, in effect, help shape academic discourse.” To a certain degree that’s correct because one important role of editors and boards is precisely to maintain the established criteria of quality and fit (in the case of JJS this includes original contribution to current scholarship, engagement with Japanese language sources, and appropriate length). That said, any journal depends on what authors submit. And, as coeditors, we collaborate not only with members on the journal’s large editorial and advisory boards but also a vast number of external reviewers, including colleagues at colleges around the world, who assess the work. At JJS, every submission is read by at least two, occasionally three external reviewers. A lot of scholars decline such invitations to review because it is, of course, a substantial imposition on their time. As many readers will appreciate, the pandemic appears to have further undermined the ability and willingness of many scholars to contribute to the profession in such ways.
Diamant and Bender also pose the question of the possible causes for the underrepresentation of college faculty on journal editorial boards. They surmise the following: “For one, we would not be surprised that prestigious institutional affiliation—the Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvards of the academic universe—helps raise the stature of their faculty, and therefore of the journals that ask them to serve on their boards as well. Second, it is also possible that faculty at so-called Research 1 (or R1) institutions, having superior access to resources, have more opportunities to publish, organize conferences, and network with faculty visiting their campuses, thereby raising their visibility and making them more attractive candidates to serve on editorial boards.”
Regarding the affiliations of JJS’s board members, a rough count shows that 8 of our current 22 board members (23 or 24 if we count ourselves) are from “the Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvards of the academic universe.” (Of course, the precise boundaries of this “universe” are up for discussion.) Even though most of JJS’s board members are from R1 institutions, the diversity of resources, teaching loads, service requirements, and compensation of all sorts across these institutions is massive. So, we find the bifurcation of universities versus colleges at the base of the study artificial and misleading. Furthermore, prestige, similar to power, works relationally: members bring their individual stature and the prestige of their institutions to JJS and the cachet of JJS to their institutions, possibly enhancing their institutions’ and their own stature in the process. (These calculations are imprecise, of course, and are dramatically different for someone based at Oxford, for instance, compared to someone based at the University of California, Riverside, for instance.)
Diamant and Bender propose that “As faculty who primarily interact with undergraduate students, we often have a keen sensibility of what sorts of articles, and writing styles, can be understood by younger students. In our experience, it is quite rare to find articles from these journals that are appropriate for undergraduate students, a situation that could be ameliorated by increasing the institutional diversity of editorial boards.” Point well taken. The massive shift in literacy, practices of reading, and modes of intellectual engagement among younger generations, including undergraduates, have been an important component of our ongoing conversation about how JJS might entice a broader range of curious people to become at least occasional readers of JJS. Our first attempts to achieve that will likely be facilitated by JJS going fully digital next year. If such young, adventurous readers with fresh ideas are out there, we’d greatly appreciate hearing from you at jjs@uw.edu! For now, we envision additional features rather than a wholesale change of the journal’s core character.
All in all, we greatly appreciate Diamant’s and Bender’s perspectives. Rest assured that we will continue to keep an eye out for colleagues at colleges when we replace people on the JJS’s boards. We also very much hope to continue this conversation, with the authors of the study or readers of this response. And, by the way, Vol. 48, no. 2 (Summer, 2022) of JJS is coming out in early August. Please check it out!
Sabine Frühstück and Morgan Pitelka
Sabine Frühstück is Professor and the Koichi Takashima Chair in Japanese Cultural Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also an affiliate faculty in History, Anthropology, Feminist Studies, and Global Studies.
Morgan Pitelka is Bernard L. Herman Distinguished Professor in History, and Chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A specialist in late medieval and early modern Japan, Pitelka also has a focus on material culture, environmental history, and urban history.
To cite this essay, please use the entry suggested below:
Sabine Frühstück and Morgan Pitelka, “Response to Diamant and Bender, ‘Where Are All the College Faculty?’,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, August 1, 2022; https://doi.org/10.52698/MEIK7936.