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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 )

Excellence. Originality. Intelligence. Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it?

In the academic evaluation system known as “peer review,” highly respected professors pass judgment, usually confidentially, on the work of others. But only those present in the deliberative chambers know exactly what is said. Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world.

Anthropologists, political scientists, literary scholars, economists, historians, and philosophers don’t share the same standards. Economists prefer mathematical models, historians favor different kinds of evidence, and philosophers don’t care much if only other philosophers understand them. But when they come together for peer assessment, academics are expected to explain their criteria, respect each other’s expertise, and guard against admiring only work that resembles their own. They must decide: Is the research original and important? Brave, or glib? Timely, or merely trendy? Pro-diversity or interdisciplinary enough?

Judging quality isn’t robotically rational; it’s emotional, cognitive, and social, too. Yet most academics’ self-respect is rooted in their ability to analyze complexity and recognize quality, in order to come to the fairest decisions about that elusive god, “excellence.” In How Professors Think, Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.

“I plan to recommend Academic Legal Writing to my students, and I recommend it to you too.” — Isthatlegal.org

“I’d recommend it to any law student…who want(s) to polish their writing skills.” — Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law Professor

“If you have a sibling…in law school…buy them a copy of Academic Legal Writing.” — FindLaw’s Writ, August 22, 2003

Designed to help law students write and publish articles, this text provides detailed instructions for every aspect of the law school writing, research, and publication process. Topics covered include law review articles and student notes, seminar term papers, how to shift from research to writing, checking citations in others- work, publishing, and publicizing written works. The book helps everyone involved in academic legal writing: professors save time and effort communicating basic points to students; law schools satisfy the American Bar Association-s second- and third-year writing requirements; and law reviews receive better notes from staff members.