An e-mail circulate in my department, asking us for suggestions for next year's speakers in our seminar series. My mind races, I know this extremely creative professor at Manchester. He's at the top of the field, let's invite him!
Then I have a look at the people who have already been suggested, all newish scholars I've never heard of, and whose research interest sounds predictable and rather narrow. I forgot that our department thinks it *is* the top of the field.
Inviting big names sounds like you want to grow, but we don't need to grow do we? That's good for the *other* big regional university. Instead, we'll do the new scholars a favour by offering them a tribune up here, bet they're excited about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment