Expertise is important for scholars, but after 5-10 years the benefits of continuing to deepen your expertise are tiny compared to broadening it.
Universities are perfectly set up to prevent breadth of expertise by hiring people for life and putting them into siloed departments.
How have I not heard this before? It's a few weeks too late to use it on the students on PhD orientation day!
The intellectual superiority of depth over breadth is a pervasive fiction in academia that sustains the culture of fetishizing specialization. I tried to fight this culture early in my career, but realized it was like punching a bag of sand.
Rather than fight the culture, I found a different strategy. Try to do interdisciplinary work that is so impactful that others will have no choice but to acknowledge its value, even if they continue to mumble that it lacks intellectual depth.
The funny thing is that it's much easier to explain to someone *outside* academia that I no longer have a single specialization. If I say it to an academic, they'll assume I'm trying to say I've stopped being productive after getting tenure and don't keep up with my field.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.