This fair-minded and reader-friendly book might just help produce the trust, respect, and tolerance necessary for academic community. By closely examining scholarly evaluation and identifying distinctive disciplinary definitions of quality among the humanities and social sciences, Michèle Lamont shows that academic culture, far from being a hierarchy declining from supposedly more "rigorous" and demanding disciplines to those less so, is constituted of many different excellencies.
Thomas Bender, author of Intellect and Public Life A masterpiece. Lamont starts with her greatest accomplishment: a nuanced account of the epistemic cultures that dominate social sciences and humanities. Their differences show the problem of building a culture of discourse in multidisciplinary review, so that committees can decide which standard is best. Lamont breaks new ground in showing how personal preferences, disciplinary, gender, and ethnic diversity, and elitist and populist impulses are incorporated in such decisions.
Arthur Stinchcombe, author of The Logic of Social Research Professors pride themselves on objectivity, or failing that, fairness to competing views, or failing that, at least the capacity for neutral analysis. But based on her ground-breaking study of peer review, Michèle Lamont argues that professorial pride is excessive, that the outcomes of peer review are shaped by institutional mechanics as much as by reason, and that reviewers favor work that looks like their own much more than they realize they do. But Lamont also shows that that reviewers are serious about trying to identify the best proposals and trying to overcome their own biases, and that their commitment to the review process itself makes the outcomes more fair. How Professors Think will be eye-opening for those who run peer review, those who participate in it, and those interested in a sociology of expert judgment.
Craig Calhoun, Social Science Research Council In this ingenious study, the first of its kind, Michèle Lamont opens an important and mysterious black box
how professors arrive at "fair evaluations". Lamont brilliantly shows us not only the interpersonal processes that make review panels work, but also how disciplinary cultures affect academic judgment, and what the political and knowledge consequences are of the way we judge excellence. It will be enlightening for everyone in academia.
Karin Knorr Cetina, University of Chicago and University of Konstanz All the deans and provosts who fret about their rankings and grant money should read this first hand account of how scholars and social scientists are evaluated in practice.
Bruno Latour, author of Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy Balanced, informative and largely persuasive.
Adam Kuper
Times Literary Supplement
How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment gives the reader keen insight into the decision-making process behind the awarding of prestigious fellowships. Lamont's book is an enjoyable read, even a bit of a page turner at times...It is a "must-read" for graduate students and new professors.
Marybeth Gasman
Academe