Meritocracy versus Authority

My dear Jennifer:

After reading and re-reading your post this weekend, I am convinced you have made a thoroughly good American argument on the question of academic titles and salutations. Indeed, I think many share Miss Manners’ prejudices that only “pompous fools” suggest being called a doctor (despite being one), and your qualms that those who use the title eagerly are insecure, pretentious status-seekers covering up the inadequacy of their “knowledge and character” with the three simple letters, Ph.D.

This is an argument from merit and democracy (how else to categorize using the title only when the community at large makes judgments on you, and then essentially votes by treating you one way or the other). Medical doctors earn their degree once, only at school. Doctors in the humanities earn their degree twice: first by completing the degree at their institution, second by convincing the Jennifers of the world the institution didn’t make a mistake over those seven to ten years. Perhaps this is why we “whine.”

Yet for all its neatness and American-ness, I am not sure I buy it. This “taking nothing for granted” attitude sounds like good sense at first blush, but in reality masks something more interesting, a preference for separate individual judgments on each person over institutional and social judgments, ie. I know the "knowledge and character" of this man better than XYZ University which gave him a doctorate. In a sense, this radical skepticism of broader social and institutional hierarchies levels distinctions between humans, outside what is purely and perpetually earned. How that respect is earned will, in turn, differ from person to person, for some morality, for others efficiency at their jobs, for others friendliness, for others cleverness, and on and on. Without the unquestioned and assumed respect for those with a traditional distinction (family, educators, churchmen, judges, bosses, military men, governors), how is social respect, order, and collegiality possible? Deference and respect break down to each individual’s constantly changing judgments on every other individual.

Your brother will giggle at me using this as a reference, but Thomas Molnar speaks of this in Authority and Its Enemies: It is in school that we learn that respect is due not only to the respectable, if one may put it that way, but to whole categories because of the function they collectively perform … Does this mean that one inculcates hypocrisy in the young when he is made to respect whole categories of people instead of those individuals who deserve respect, or when he is taught manners that he must use in all circumstances? Manners and manifestations of social respect are not equivalents of hypocrisy, just as ethical commands do not discriminate between those toward whom one ought to be charitable and others toward whom one does not have to be. There would be no social coexistence without treating individuals also as members of groups, uniformly. We cannot tell merit from lack of it in normal social relations; we must hence give the benefit of doubt to something that stands above the individual (from the collective point of view), namely the function, the rank, the role, the representivity. We pay our respects to the persona which was the mask that the characters wore in Greek tragedies and which represented types, not individuals. Old age ought to be respected ( to cite one example among many), even though not every old man or woman is individually worthy of respect.

Much of this came to mind recently when I noticed some students call their professors (doctors all) by their first names. Apparently we are all students now, there are no traditional distinctions in the academy, and “collective learning” signals we should call each other Frank, Bob, and Joe. This breakdown of the barrier between professor and student, masking itself as back-slapping friendliness, stinks of lack of respect for those with more learning and position.

I do not let students do this, and they always refer to me as “Professor” or “Doctor.” As I tell them, “I’ve met my quota for friends. I don’t want any more.”

As regards Miss Manners, she is mistaken in noting that “traditionally” only medical doctors are referred to by their title. If by “traditionally” she means post-1960, then she is correct but laboring with a frighteningly short perspective, sort of like saying t-shirts and ball caps are traditional American dress. My New American Etiquette of 1940 (which I prefer over the creeping chummy casualness of post-1960 guides), written at a time when many profs had only a Masters, says: Assistant professors and instructors are always addressed as “Mr.” Full professors are addressed as “Professor” in the vicinity of the college or whenever they are engaged in educational work elsewhere. Otherwise they too are given the title “Mr.” The title “Doctor” should be carefully reserved and used only in addressing persons who hold a doctor’s degree.

Most cordially,

Doctor Curmudgeon