How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (review)

How Professors Think is intended for everyone who is interested in better understanding how the academic evaluation system known as “peer review” works. As Lamont states in Chapter 1, “I want to open the black box of peer review and make the process of evaluation more transparent, especially for younger academics looking in from the outside. I also want to make the older, established scholars—the gatekeepers—think hard and think again about the limits of what they are doing, particularly when they define ‘what is exciting’ as ‘what most looks like me (or my work)’ (p. 12).

The book consists of seven chapters, an appendix of methods and data analysis, and endnotes consisting of extensive citations and comments for each chapter. One of the book’s strengths is that its methodology could be a model for other projects because of the clarity and detail of description.

Chapter 1, “Opening the Black Box of Peer Review,” details how the research was conducted, including Lamont’s interviews of funding panels that evaluate grants or fellowship proposals submitted by faculty members and graduate students. The objective of the 81 individual interviews, which included panelists, panel chairs, and program officers, was “to learn about the arguments that panelists had made for and against specific proposals, their views about the outcomes of the competition, and the thinking behind the ranking of proposals both prior to and after the panel meeting” (p. 13).

Peers pass judgment on the quality of their peers’ work in a secretive fashion—hence the black box image. Academia stresses quality, excellence, and originality, but how are these terms defined? In How Professors Think, Lamont aims to clarify the thought processes by examining the evaluative cultures of six disciplines: anthropology, economics, English literature, history, philosophy, and political science.

How Professors Think includes a chapter on how panels are formed and what panelists are asked to do. Chapter 3 was particularly interesting because it describes disciplinary cultures at play in many ways in academic life. When departments function in “silos,” disciplinary stereotypes are reinforced by lack of contact with other departments. For anyone who has served on a tenure and promotion committee or been responsible for making other personnel decisions, this chapter is particularly insightful in explaining the interdisciplinary thinking that informs decision making. Lamont integrates specific comments from the interviews across disciplines to illustrate the thinking that takes place in the “black box.”

Lamont points out that almost without exception, the panelists interviewed consider their deliberations fair and are “almost unanimous in their belief that ‘the process works’” (p. 109) even though they are not always sure how it works. Chapter 4 explains what constitutes a good panelist and describes extraneous influences on panel outcomes. Lamont found that “strategic voting, horse-trading, self-interest, and idiosyncratic and inconsistent criteria all are unavoidable parts of the equation” (p. 156).

For junior scholars striving to understand the process of winning fellowships, Chapter 5 will be of interest. This chapter identifies the essential elements of a proposal and the six criteria (clarity, quality, originality, significance, methods, and feasibility) for excellence and the weights associated with each based on discipline. The information presented provides insights into the “magic formula” that could increase chances for success. Yet Lamont summarizes this chapter: “The goal of a consistent and unified process is utopian: perspectives shift and the weight given to each criterion varies as the characteristics of the group of proposals being considered prime evaluators to consider different facets of each proposal in turn” (p. 201).

Chapter 6 addresses how the criteria of interdisciplinarity and diversity are used to distinguish one proposal from another. Lamont’s research revealed that panelists consider awardees’ racial and gender diversity but also weigh their geographical location, the types of institutions where they teach (public/private, elite/nonelite, colleges/research universities), and the range of disciplines they represent. Table 6.1 (p. 213) indicates that 34% of the...