"Thank You for That [Awful] Question"

I am mostly out of the business of giving blog advice for teaching job hopefuls, largely because I've repeated my advice too many times and it's all archived. It can be summarized easily enough: (a) Everyone should read Martha Nussbaum's "Cooking for a Job" article, hopefully with concern rather than as a "how-to"; (b) although it makes sense to direct advice at hiring candidates, hiring faculties are both the least-cost-avoiders and the ones with a greater moral obligation to do it right, so (a) applies especially to them. But I did want to comment on something said in response to Rhett's post. One of the virtues of both tenure and a long stint on a blog is that you can get away with adding a little sour to the sweet, like putting a lemon wedge on a glass of iced tea. I'm not sure this counts as advice, exactly, especially because the faculty members most in need of hearing it are perhaps the least likely to take it. Call it, rather, an observation about what has in my experience become a pretty strong norm at most schools not just at job-talks but in workshops and talks of all sorts, and one I think we need to ease back on.

On Rhett's post, a commenter identifying as "AnonHiringChair" writes:

I would also add a reminder that, during questioning, you always make the person asking the question feel good about herself. I've seen many times when a member of my faculty asks a less-than-great question and the candidate's response makes clear to everyone in the room that it was a less-than-great question. Fast forward to voting and the faculty member in question frequently finds another reason to argue against the candidate. Bottom line: When you make the person asking the question feel bad about herself, it will redound to your detriment (and conversely, when you can make the person asking the question feel good about herself, it will redound to your benefit).

Of course this is perfectly sensible advice for job candidates, and my experience over the last few years suggests that it's been drummed into many candidates, especially those coming out of fellowships. Like many such norms, however, it is not used just by job candidates; many speakers have a frequent habit of identifying many, most, or even all questions they receive as "good" questions.

I am certainly not complaining about civility at job-talks and workshops. But like most such sensible advice, I wonder if this one hasn't been applied too much and too mechanically. I have nothing against "bad" or dumb questions as such, as should be clear from my own long record of dumb questions on such occasions. Self-serving (and self-citing), irrelevant, or pointless questions, yes; we should avoid those. But, as with journalists,  it's more important for academic questioners to engage and clarify than to worry about looking smart. Still, since we all know that there is such a thing as a bad or dumb question, and that they make frequent appearances at job-talks and workshops, I wonder whether there aren't better ways to be civil and respectful than to respond promiscuously or automatically with "That's a great question" every time a question is asked. When I ask or am asked a dumb question, I am perfectly happy to give and receive the words "Thank you for the question." In particular, when I ask a dumb question, I think it's not unreasonable to expect courtesy in return, but I definitely don't expect (or want, really) flattery. "That's a good question" risks becoming both excess verbiage and a mere tic. In a sense it may reveal a problem with a good deal of both academic and civic discourse: not enough plain civility, and too much flattery and mutual back-patting, as if people have forgotten that it is quite possible to be polite in a clear and economical fashion without also concerning oneself with the feelings and ego of one's interlocutor. Our society worries too much about feelings and not enough about common courtesy. 

There is, of course, an added concern about being too quick to call something a good question. As complaint department staff have long known, it is possible for a polite statement, properly delivered, to mean its exact opposite. The more glaringly dumb or irrelevant a question is, the more likely it is that the statement "That's a good question" will be heard by everyone in the room, with the possible exception of the questioner, as conveying the statement "What in God's name were you thinking when you asked that?" This is another virtue of simple but non-substantive civility: "Thank you" need not be taken as rendering a judgment on the question, and thus mostly avoids the problem of irony. (I actually think the legal academy needs much more irony, but that's a subject for another time.) 

And one more problem: I have found, and not infrequently, that "That's a good question" is sometimes followed by an answer that avoids or evades the question rather than make a good-faith effort to answer it. One quite understands the impulse when the question is genuinely irrelevant, although there are more or less effective ways to pivot from such a question. But occasionally the question actually is good, and when a questioner has both identified a question as "good," however perfunctorily, and then not answered it, the exchange is usually underlined for me as especially dissatisfying. That's one more reason that "Thank you" is such a useful phrase. Indeed, it should be possible to be civil, but also to civilly explain how and why a particular question is, in fact, off-base or irrelevant or outside the scope or what have you, or conversely to acknowledge in a polite and responsive rather than defensive fashion that the question is good and requires more thought. 

None of this negates the general usefulness of the commenter's advice, especially since, as I observed up front, those faculty who most expect flattery from a speaker are least likely to be satisfied with anything less. But these are the kinds of general norms that all of us who sit through or deliver endless talks should think about at least a little, and like all such norms they require some individual pushes in the right direction. In particular, I don't mean to place the burden on job-talkers; I notice it when a job-talker is too free with flattery, but I don't hold it against him or her.

But there are others who perhaps need the advice to emphasize and expect civility rather than flattery, not to evade questions labeled as "good," and, as a general rule, to avoid calling bad questions good. Habits of this sort, first adopted when one is a supplicant, end up becoming part of one's repertoire even when one is "just" a workshop speaker, with no job riding on the outcome of the talk, and end up being assumed or expected by faculty audiences as well. The legal academy and perhaps most academic fields may well need more civility, but not more flattery. Ideally, workshop speakers who are not job supplicants, and who indeed are already tenured and rooted somewhere, could certainly afford to ease up on this tic. Faculty audiences should train themselves not to expect or encourage it. And advisors to job candidates, especially those who send large numbers of fellows and such out into the world, should certainly carefully consider the costs and benefits of the advice they give, and remind their charges that this advice, like all advice, should be used sparingly and with care rather than heaped upon every question, no matter how bad it actually and obviously is.