2. My concern about your being late or talking over me or going in and out of class, missing classes. . . is actually a concern with your well being once you leave USC. In the world I inhabit, especially when you have not built up credibility with years of scrupulous and proper behavior, you "lose points" rapidly by being late, etc. What drives me to distraction is watching you happily set yourself up to go over a cliff or be hit by a truck. Perhaps I am not tough enough, or even do not convey my expectations (I think I have done the latter), but in fact the world is filled with people whose respect you covet but who are not tough or do not tell you what to do. You are supposed to have mastered proper decorum.

As a friend of mine said, he found that letters of recommendation for those students just had to wait and often did not go out--other students' requests came first.

Also, it does not serve you well to "talk back" to your professor. I don't care, so much as I watch you self-destruct before my eyes. I think of what your parents/coach/bosses would think.

What you brag about shows who you are, not the person being described. Joe, for example, has made many contributions, widely recognized, but the best way of describing him would be in terms of two or three of the most influential contributions or lines of research. Of course, we add National Academies, Guggenheims, etc.

"peer-reviewed publications" is a sign of something fishy, since that is what we expect. Grants may or may not be indicative of quality, depends on the field. If someone won an award of medium prominence twenty years ago, it does not count for much in general. N millions of dollars of grants might be impressive, but again what really counts is contribution.

Books are a curious category. Did you write them yourself, or are they edited collections. You might say "five books," but I always then check to see if they are edited collections. On the other hand, titles always are good currency, since they are substantive, again as long as they are by the person (and not edited).

As for public service, the bigger the role, the better. Advising on some sort of state committee is nice, but bragging about it is a sign of weakness in general. But being deputy undersecretary of xyz in DC, or head of department in Sacramento means something real.

Marginal cases list publication quantity, either because the contributions do not add up, or because as in medicine the numbers are large, reflect joint pubs, and that's what they do.

The problem is that bragging about weak stuff devalues the strong contributions. On the other hand, I have no idea what works for the general public. Maybe there you can brag about numbers of peer-reviewed pubs, but I think this shows that you have little regard for the academic culture.

I look for fluff, and usually do find it. On the other hand, some people are so substantial they are bulletproof--although they too may well engage in fluffery. In general, I observe that the most prominent academics are acutely aware of their status, and when they are with others of their rank they tend to try to show off. Not all, not always, but more often than you would believe. I don't know if women are like this, but men are surely like this in my observation.

Dear Professor Krieger,

Next weekend I will be attending a conference and I
won't be flying back until Tuesday morning. I will be missing class on
Monday, I am a little concerned about what I will be missing on Monday. Do you think I will be able to pick up the information I will miss quickly if I visit you at office
hours that week?

I wrote back:
What students who chose to miss classes did when I was a student was to consult with other students and learn from them. Are things different now? (It's not that I won't help you,I'll gladly do that. But you are choosing to miss class, and not being proactive in working around it. What would an employer think?)

You don't want to set yourself up. You want to be in charge and show that you can manage your life--unless you have real tragedy visited upon you.

How do you approach a new field, and get a sense of the lay of the scholarly land--trace out what is in the literature: see the forest for the trees? What's up here?
Listening to a Seminar, Reading a Promotion Dossier, Reading an Article or Book outside a field I know well.
I assume that I can understand anything, at some limited level to be sure, but anything. It is like something I know already.
1. There must be a story here. What are you up to? What is the punchline? What is the claim? (What is a "story"?)
a. How does X work, where X is an argument or an object or a process or . . .
b. What is the method of inquiry and study? How do you go from the materials you work with (and what are they?) to your claims?
2. Is the evidence and theory potentially adequate to the claim? A matter of comparable levels of detail.
3. Is the argument I am reading or hearing experiential? That is, the punchline is less important than the process of going through it. A mathematical proof, poetry or a novel or some forms of criticism and belles letters.
4. What is at stake here? The field of argument in this discipline or arena.
5. Nothing is new, all is a repetition and variation. Analogy is destiny. Models and Metaphors: mechanism, typology or archetype, structure, narrative, form.
6. Am I being snookered? What is hidden, left out, inconsistent? Does it make sense as a whole? Are the special arguments really special? Are the outliers ignorable, should they be trimmed off, are they part of the story?
7. How does the work deal with arguments within the field, and with matters of truth or reliability or credibility? I do not concern myself much with whether the claim is empirically true or supported by the evidence or whether the argument has flaws. (I assume that I can be effectively lied to on matters at this level of detail. Stuff is outside my ken. Arguments must have apparently-fatal flaws.) I leave this to the experts on the archives, the statistics, or the internal issues within the field. So, for example, there are others who can better sniff out problems with claims about citation statistics or with teaching evaluations or with charts and diagrams or with technical philosophical arguments.
8. Would you buy a used car from this dealer? In the end, Are you being given a fair representation of the facts and judgments and arguments so that you could make your own decision? Can I supply (from other sources?) what is missing, and so make a judgment?
9. When I ask a question, I am trying to find out what is really going on. Am I on track?

How do I choose problems to work on, whether in my books, in my photographic and now aural documentation of Los Angeles, in teaching? How do I know about disparate fields?
1. I try lots of topics, and only some prove fruitful for me. Hence, the topics that characterize my work may be diverse, but, as in evolution's species, there is continuity with the past, but much of the intermediate materials are no longer much available. What is apparently incommensurable and diverse and discrete is actually historically linked. Topics may come up by chance, but they are not likely to be pursued unless they fit into a larger agenda.
2. Whatever the topic, I explore the scholarly literature, finding the authoritative works, often going backwards in time, and ground myself in what is known or understood. I rarely if ever master the subtleties of many of the subfields and subjects. I do want to avoid making egregious mistakes, and to be sure that I am decently grounded in scholarship. Has this topic been so well explored, there is little I can contribute?
3. I was trained in physics, but also had an undergraduate education that emphasized the Great Books, and thinkers about politics and society. It took me many years of subsequent reading and thinking to have any decent critical sense of the Books and thinkers, but the origin is in my first two years of college as well as high school.
4. Over the now-many years, I have developed an informed sensibility, reading bits and pieces of scholarship. More to the point, there is lots I have no real feeling for (biology and medicine, history), but others ignore that because they see only what I do know. In any case, I seem to have no reluctance to trying to figure out foreign material. I assume all is understandable, there is a story here, it's like something else I do know. And, if I really don't know anything, or have no feeling for the problem, I find people (or sources) who can help me. Or, I make an informed guess, and have others correct me, or I read further and get corrected by what I read.
5. In any case, the topics that capture my attention for more than an instant are almost always informed by past experience and scholarly knowledge. When I was starting out, I surely went down less fruitful paths (mistakes?). But, in the end, even the diversions prove useful, often years later. (In effect, I make them useful.) What I recall is that by the time of college I had some sort of taste that was reliable enough for me. I was brought up in a working-class family, smart but not highly educated, with a strong political interest. I was an outsider, my nose pressed against the glass, and I wanted in.
6. When I think of my books, and other research, there are several big themes:
a. Structure. Mathematics/physics. Models (drawn from diverse humanistic fields such as religion)
b. Design. Why there is order in the world
c. Decisions and leadership

In each case, what I am trying to show is how the world makes sense, how what might seem esoteric or unavailable is not so foreign to one's everyday knowledge and examples.

7. In my photographing and Los Angeles media (sound, video) work, the topics are typically what is everyday but ignorable. I like topics where there are many many examples (patterns, types). And I am informed by major topics in the study of cities: work and worksites, worship, street life and public spaces and traffic, environment and background ambiance, commerce and commercial districts, infrastructure, housing, and "how the other half lives." My techniques and styles of work are usually unashamedly borrowed from artists (photographers, painters)--I am a documentor, not an artist. I do not worry about originality or the artworld. I am concerned with the depth and sensibility of my documentation, its reliability and future usefulness. Can I tell a good story about what I am doing, have I done a good job in indexing the corpus, does it look or sound interesting?
8. I record public (aural) ambience, where ambience refers to what might be called background sound, usually unavoidable, pervasive, varying, and to be ignored if possible while you are up to your tasks. To attend to public ambience is to be up to a new task, attending to what is to be ignored, the emperor's new clothes. Public ambience may include industrial noise, conversations, traffic and infrastructure, HVAC, people playing basketball or shopping, commerce, sounds of bells and pings of ATM machines (not church bells), other people in the room when in a restaurant, the sounds of worship coming out of a church, worksites, flatulence, . . . Of course, in other places it may include animal sounds, wind and rain, plants rubbing against each other, . . . To record public ambience in Los Angeles is to create a documentary record of the place, to be interpreted and listened to in decades hence. I am interested in patterns, in the everyday, in cases where there are many examples.
What is remarkable is that in public, there is almost no expectation of privacy. Conversations are loud, cellphone conversations are broadcast. Everything is shown, displayed,... Not always, but often...

I have documented public and private Los Angeles, what you can see from and on the street and what is behind closed doors. The profane and the sacred. I am interested in commerce and merchandising, services and real estate. Industrial worksites and people-at-work, utilities and ports and rail yards and warehouses. Public life includes conversations heard out loud, life of the bus and transit, and people gathering together to each. As for the streets there is background ambience, commercial and wholesale districts, neighborhoods, residential and industrial streets, and traffic and people using transit. On those streets are thousands of places of worship, and some of the time I go inside as well. Infrastructure provides the nerveways and arterials that link it all together.

Every detail matters as it is, so we want to have lots of resolution and accuracy.
What I want to do is to make you stop and look and listen: my work has sensitized to what is there, in front of you. So you stop to confirm and enhance your now trained intuition.

9. (I am informed by W. H. Whyte, although less with human behavior than with the background and signs of behavior, but also by a long tradition of photographing cities and city life--Marville, Atget, Evans, Friedlander. Also, Diderot on worksites; Ruscha on the street, Sanders and the Beckers on typologies. RM Schafer on soundscape.)

10. I am like the fieldwork anthropologist or linguist, trying to document a vanishing culture. Here, what is vanishing is the now and casually-made records of the now (perhaps of low quality, but as likely they are not preserved, nor are they locatable).

11. More generally, I find topics because my eyes and ears and mind are open enough, things come along, and as mentioned earlier many topics do not pan out. I am always in business.

Otherwise, perhaps you ought go to medical school or law school?

1. You are being trained to do research and participate in a community of scholars. Find a faculty member with whom you can work, at first on their ongoing projects, and link up early. You want someone who "owns" you, who feels responsible for you.
2. Attend research seminars, often. People will notice that you are there. When you have questions, ask them.
3. Start looking at the top five journals in your area of concern or your field. If you have time, look at the last five years of issues.
4. Find peers, in your own department or in allied departments.
5. Start thinking about your future career. Go to meetings in your field, and eventually present at those meetings. It's fine to talk to anyone whose work interests you. Even the most famous of people rarely feel they are being attended to enough--they hunger for attention.
6. Start reading in your field, above and beyond your courses.
7. Look respectable. No flip-flops, no too casual clothes. You really don't want to look like an undergraduate.
8. Prepare for your classes, so that you are able to contribute, to ask questions, etc. If you are shy, you will have to learn to speak up.
9. If you have made a mistake in coming to this university, speak to your advisor early on, and see if something can be done. If nothing can be done, go to another university.
10. Intellectual and cultural life at a research university is usually rich, and you might as well enjoy it--seminars in other departments, visiting big shots, etc.

2. On fields in which a book is the standard contribution, usually impact and contribution is not well indicated by citations, for promotion purposes. It is indicated by book reviews, how many and their venues. Main journals in the field vs. specialized ones, many vs. one or two. In the journal article fields, citations indicate something about impact, but for substance, it is useful to rely on the letters.

3. Books tend to take a while to be influential through citations in journal articles, even longer in other books, times too long compared to when decisions are called for. Often, one has to rely on reference letters for first books when promotion to associate is on the agenda.

4. For journal fields: Citations are helpful for promotion to associate, crucial for promotion to full. Again, issues of delay, but much shorter delay than for books.

5. Some fields demand a book and several articles. (Usually, this is honored in the breach, by the way.) The articles here are previews, almost always. People are waiting for the book to really evaluate the work.

6. In a field like political science or sociology, while there is often talk about demanding a book and a bunch of articles, individuals tend to show one tendency OR the other. The articles can be incremental contributions, to be evaluated as a whole, or previews of the book. If previews, we want to see the book.

7. In all fields, I am convinced that it should be possible to explain to a professor layman and the provost what the contribution is and its significance, even if the field is technical or has a specialized diction and discourse. Moreover, letters can be substantive using lay language in describing the contribution clearly.

For a university to become stronger, MANY of the lateral appointments must be very stong, as should be MORE and MORE of the internal promotions. They set the standard, they benchmark. Strong ones cases make weak ones seem untenable, unless there are institutional reasons that are overriding.

You would not want the professor of surgery to promote a candidate who is not first-rate as a surgeon-- It's more general, you would not want a university department to promote a candidate who is not first-rate as a scholar. Would you trust your own children or spouse to this person's care and tuition?

"Surgeon" or "scholar" can be slippery notions. The candidate might be an excellent performer but not a fine researcher. The candidate might be a superior manager, but you do not want them actually teaching or dealing with patients or doing research. Institutions will make judgments of this sort all the time--few people are superior at everything, and only some strengths are relevant to that institution's mission.

We make mistakes, probably at least 1/3 the time, surely no less than 1/10 the time. I believe we can do better, but that would demand that we are honest with ourselves, ask tough questions, and be realistic about our judgments. And if we have made a mistake, how can we rectify them through mentoring, guidance, and incentives.

In the background is the fact that the performance of members of a department may be rising in time, new members in general stronger than current ones (at least in mean). If we realize this, when we make appointments we don't want to create a permanent underclass, so to speak, by making another mistake.

Taste: It helps to have good taste, to choose problems that are fruitful, to modify projects so that they are more interesting, to focus on what matters. It's not just a good idea, it is an idea that allows for development.

Pride in Workmanship: Carefulness, scrupulousness, timely performance. No excuses. You stand behind the work you deliver.

Storytelling: You can describe what you are doing in a thoughtful manner, you can tell a story about your project that makes sense of it, even to those who are not expert or cognoscenti. Your project itself is that story. And you can write well enough so that your grammar and diction do not get in the way.

What seems to matter much less is brilliance, intelligence, following the rules, doing what was required--what is often needed for much schoolwork, but seems not too helpful in projects.

1. Most faculty are not savvy about when to be promoted to full. They don't see it as a matter of building credibility, and of building the credibility of their dean. It does you no good to come up and get turned down; it hurts the credibility of the department/school. So if a faculty member insists on being considered for promotion, it is up to the dean and colleagues to indicate the risks, and also not put the school's reputation on the line. The costs of being turned down are substantial, and need not be incurred. This does not mean you want to be overly conservative, but it is usually apparent to experienced colleagues when someone is pushing the envelope without good reason. On the other hand, if someone has done important work, received the right grants, published in the right venues, they ought be promoted as soon as that is achieved.

2. Junior faculty do not always know how to build their careers. They need to be told what to do, not as orders but as guidance to what is a strong record of achievement. Where to publish, what to publish, what is significant work. Eventually people learn, but sometimes it takes more than the probationary period. Again, it does no one any good to be turned down for tenure--hurts the person, hurts the school. So, when someone comes up they should have done what they ought to have done, and if not they should not count on the school to support them.

3. Of course, faculty members are free to follow their own notions, ignoring advice by mentors. If they succeed, wonderful. But if they do not, it makes no sense for a school to push for their promotion.

4. Deans, with concurrence of the Office of the Provost, may have idiosyncratic goals for a particular faculty member. It should all be in writing. Achievement of those goals, perhaps unusual as they are, would be warrants for promotion.

5. As for people who are given a chance to be reconsidered, the Faculty Handbook has specific language about what needs to be offered on the reconsideration. Usually it is substantial new work, important grants received, recognitions that are significant. It's often hard to do that in a year, but I have seen it done--with panache. Stuff that was in the pipeline spurts out, and it is clear this is not just a one time event but a sign of the future. The book is not only written, but now it is revised, much stronger, and has been finally accepted by a press. The R01 comes in.

2. Imagine that you are a parent, whose child brings you a mechanics report on a car the child wants you to purchase for her:
a. You want to be sure the mechanics are authoritative, and not in the pocket of the seller of the car or of your child.
b. You read over the mechanics' reports and you want to be able to understand them, so if they are purely in terms of automotive engineering language you are not sure what to make of them.
c. The report of the supervisory mechanic should be balanced, reflecting the mechanics' reports, indicating both problems and virtues.
d. Your child's argument should reflect all the previous reports, but might well bring in their special needs or desires.

Everyone is perhaps committed to your buying the car (or your child would not be showing you the report), so you have to be skeptical.

3. In general, the big question is, what is the contribution to scholarship (or the arts) made by the candidate. While this may well be described in technical terms in some of the letters of reference and even in the personal statement, it matters the contribution be described in ordinary terms so that a judgment can be made. If no one describes the contribution in ordinary terms, you might wonder what it is. In general, it does not help the case if all the letters are highly technical, especially if it is apparent that none of the writers have actually read and absorbed the work.
Numbers of publications depend on the field, and lots of publications but no discernible contribution is unlikely to work. If a book published by a major press is the norm in the field, it must be there.
Personal statements that explain the meaning of the work, and a credible account of the trajectory (past and future) are very helpful. Bragging never works. And if you speak about a book that you are writing, you might well be asked for the manuscript so far.

4. The candidate and dossier needs to be compared to the strongest appointments or promotions at that rank and cohort at the university--in all fields. Finding someone who is as weak as is the candidate who got promoted is rarely convincing.

5. The impact is usually clear from the letters.

6. As in 2 above, in general assessments by interested parties, or unbalanced assessments (good or bad) are rarely effective. Letters have to be credible, substantive, disinterested, and clear.

7. Did the candidate do what they were supposed to do: raise external grants of the right sort, publish the book, etc. Many schools have standards that are honored only in the breach.

8. When people come up earlier than expected, they should have a strong case. That others with weaker dossiers at other universities ("better" than our university) have been promoted is not probative--perhaps a mistake was made elsewhere?

9. In general, deans and committees are the guilty parties in making a case problematic. Memoranda are biased, unbalanced advocacy, lacking in substance, internally inconsistent (within a dossier, among dossiers from a single unit). You would never buy a used car from these individuals--and this hurts the sales prospects for most cars.

10. Keep in mind that there are strong effective dossiers, even for candidates who are not the most distinguished. It's all about honest assessment, a good account of the unit's needs, a good sense that the dean knows what they are "buying." Schools are the most powerful people in promotion and tenure, for when they prepare an honest dossier they are likely to prevail.

Since early March, the NY Times has been running a weekly series of photographic essays by Richard Perry (maybe only on its website). They focus on industries still alive in NYC. They are spectacular photographs, complementing the kind of photographs made by Lee Friedlander when he photographed at a supercomputer company, Cray Inc..

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~krieger

Now we know a lot about solidarity in actual practice. Despite John Strauss's dismissing my observation at one seminar, in fact I know of very few USC professors who would even think of renting out their daughters (or sons, for that matter) as sex workers. That may be because of vanity and pride and their economically privileged positions, but I think it is also the case that they understand that family and personal relations have built-in unbreachable limits. The market and the law stops at their doorsteps, for they understand being a father or mother in other terms. Real entrepreneurs and leaders are similarly outside the realm of most of the game-and-powers model.