Countdown: 291 days until submission

There have been three interesting developments. I am making my way through the Shu dissertation. I decided to start talking with my friends in academia about university life and obligations. One of them is a professor at Rutgers who was a graduate student at Harvard during my last couple years there as an undergraduate. I called him to set up an appointment to talk and then looked up his dissertation: "The American Regime and Black Consciousness of Africa." Conceptually, it deals with diasporas, collective identity formation, and mechanisms for affecting U.S. foreign policy. Its subject is the African Diaspora, but I could easily apply it to Taiwan. It also deals with trans-territoriality, which in my parlance means transnational activism. Thus, it is a great match for my research, and I had no idea that this fit was possible until I started to think about who could tell me what it is like to be a tenure-track professor. I am also contacting other professors I know who have graduated from my program or who I have interacted with socially. I don't want to get scared about academia until I know what it entails. Right now, I only know that I don't want to do committee work. But maybe committee work, as onerous as it may be, is balanced by better activities. I have to find out. Another interesting development comes from my stepmother. I asked her, literally, does your job (as an adoptions examiner who makes recommendations to judges on possible adoptions) allow you to make a difference in people's lives? She said yes, because she has built a reputation that makes her valuable in her professional community for the advice she gives. I told her that I would like to advise people and, ideally, be a mediator and peace-maker. So, one of the examples I will probably follow is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard and helped mediate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians in 1950. I would love to do something like that. Finally, after reading through the Shu Dissertation a bit, I have learned a great deal about the connections between academia and politics through the life of Peng Ming-min.

The section on Peng Ming-min deals with how he developed his ardent Formosan nationalism. This is important for my research because I have to find out the connections among the different activists, and Peng was one of the first, if not THE first activist to travel abroad promoting Taiwan Independence.

Reading about Peng has clarified my concerns about academia. I want to teach and write, learn and grow as a scholar, but I NOT want to get trapped in the confines of the university. I don't want to be ONLY an academic. What worries me is that so many of the academics I meet seem perfectly satisfied being only academics. It seems the burdens and obligations of supporting a university take all the time they would have to become scholar-activists. I want to be active in the media, in social entrepreneurship (social businesses and non-profits), while also advising politicians and being one myself at some point. The issue I am having is whether academia is a necessary stepping stone to everything else I want to do, or whether a Ph.D. will be my ticket. Do I have to learn how to navigate institutions in order to create organizations, or can I attract sufficient help (in terms of investment and partners) just with a Ph.D.? I worry that the answer will be "you have to learn to navigate institutions as a professor" in order to prove that you have what it takes to start organizations or rise up in government. I wish the answer were as simple as "finish the Ph.D. then do what you want", but I have a hunch that isn't the case given the oversupply of Ph.D. The truth is I cannot know the answer unless I actually try to do the stuff I want with the Ph.D. alone. What may happen is that I will try to do things outside of institutions, with limited success, and then I will join an institution to establish a professional foundation, followed by publications of academic and popular books that will allow me to leave academia. I don't think there is any single path to the activities I want to do, so the best answer for me is probably: see what happens.

Countdown: 292 days until submission

I have started my regimen of reading 50 pages per day of each dissertation. I have, happily discovered that reading dissertations is not an onerous and time-consuming burden, like reading journal articles. Since dissertations are double-spaced and crammed with footnotes and charts, finishing one page takes about a minute. I am reading "Transforming National Identity in the Diaspora." The introduction chapter was easy to finish because I know most of the background of Taiwan and the Taiwan Independence Movement in the United States. I am now reading about the life of Peng Ming-Min, a key activist who advocated Taiwanese independence in many other countries (Japan, Canada, Sweden) before settling in the US and becoming the second president of FAPA. At the rate of 1 page page minute, I should be able to read 50 pages in an hour if I have no distractions. So, I may increase my daily reading to 100 pages per day (90 minutes) so that I can finish by the beginning of October.

Peng Ming-Min is a key part of my research because he was one of the earliest advocates of Taiwan Independence and he went back to Taiwan to run for president in 1996. The period I am looking at is the formation of FAPA, between 1977 and 1981. The key event was the official recognition of China by the United States in 1979. This caused a problem for Taiwan because the immgration quota from China to the US, which previously covered only Taiwan, was now shared by Taiwan and China, thus severely limiting the quota for Taiwanese immigrants. TIM activists wanted to get a separate quota for Taiwan, and so they went to the state department and managed to get this change. Also in 1979 the US passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which held that, despite the diplomatic recognition of the PRC, relations with Taiwan would remain. Rep. Jim Leach was a newly elected Republican Congressman from Iowa, and he inserted an amendment to the TRA advocating democracy on Taiwan. Once the TIM succeeded in changing the immigration quota, they search for congressional representatives who would be good allies for their cause. Rep. Leach was an obvious ally. However, he would only work with them to promote democracy on Taiwan, not to promote independence, which he knew would provoke war between the PRC and Taiwan, and would likely involve the U.S. So, a key element of my research here is how the TIM was able to frame its cause as a pro-democracy issue involving human rights while simultaneously maintaining a strong connection with independence activists like Peng Ming-min.

I have begun to look for insider accounts of academic life. One of the great things about the Internet is that, in addition to having free access to journal papers and dissertations as a graduate student, I also can look at public blogs (or weblogs, as I prefer to call them), and I can find them easily through links provided by a friend of mine, Arbitrista, who operates The Third Estate (www.third-estate.blogspot.com). Through his links I found Dr. Crazy, a tenured Assistant Professor at some university. I discovered this post, in which he contemplates a second book, and it disturbed me a great deal. I found two great objections. First, the reasons for writing a book were reduced to (a) getting Full Professor and (b) the inherent interest of the topic. The first is an instrumentalist perspective, the second is an intrinsic value perspective. What was missing is the perspective I prefer: What do people need to know (what does society need to make progress) and what book would meet that need? The instrumentalist perspective, aimed at making more money, cheapens the value of the book. The instrinsic value perspective makes the book self-serving, not serving a higher cause. I want the higher cause, the noble purpose, to orient my writing. What strikes me with horror is that I will likely be surrounded by other academics who lack any notion of higher purpose, and in order to get promoted the department will, as Dr. Crazy describes in his post, consider only my productivity within a set time limit (how many journal articles or books I publish over a set number of years). My criterion for promotion is the impact of the work on the field, and also on society, and you cannot measure that with productivity assessments. So, I am thinking that perhaps I should focus on getting a university job that is oriented toward non-profits while still teaching. I really do not want a tenure clock ticking in my life, or any clock for that matter. I can, of course, produce lots of material very quickly, but I don't want to be in an environment where everyone ignores what I care about the most: The application of important ideas for the purpose of helping people and improving the world.

Countdown: 293 days until submission

Ever since I passed my First Exam in January 2006, I have been collecting journal articles and dissertations thaat I thought were relevant to my topics of interest: Social Capital, Asia, Ethnic Lobbies, US Foreign Policy, etc. Once I passed my Second Exam (my proposal was approved), I slowed down on collecting articles and dissertations as I focused on actually doing interviews. Over the past year I have interviewed three types of people: Taiwanese Independence Activists, who may or may not have been associated with the Formosan Association for Public Affairs; People associated with the Gang of Four (Rep. Leach, Rep. Solarz, Sen. Kennedy, Sen. Pell); Academics who study the topics of interest I mentioned above. The problem I have been having is the problem every researcher has: How do you know when you have accumulated enough information from the "right" people, and what constitutes the "right"people? Should one emphasize quantity (interviewing people even if they are only tangentially related to the topic) or quality (people who are directly related to the topic)? My wife has been emphasizing the quantity ever since a friend of mine from the same program (who now teaches as a tenure-track professor in the CUNY system) told me about the 25 people threshold. So, I have been trying to get to that number, regardless of the precise relationship to my topic. However, over this weekend I compiled the dissertations I collected over the past 3 years, and most of them over the past couple weeks. I have found some critical dissertations that now point me in the right direction in terms of quality. Specifically, I found this dissertation: "Transforming National Identity in the Diaspora." It is a collection of biographies of the key Taiwan Independence Activists, including those who were critical in the formation of FAPA, serving as the president of FAPA in the first few years that I am studying. Now I don't have to be blind as I search for interview subjects.

My question, as I have explained it to novices a few times, is this: How did the Taiwan Independence Movement, which is a transnational movement with activists in different parts of the world, manage to create a grassroots lobby in the United States that in a short period of time (10 years) overcame the obstacles of limited financial power and voting power to become the #2 lobby in Congress (after AIPAC, the Jewish American Lobby)? This question is important because the model it represents is becoming very important for people in domestic politics and international relations. People from country A (The Republic of China on Taiwan, in this case) settle in the US (country B), and, after a few decades manage to accumulate enough money and followers to place pressure on the United States Congress to, in turn, place pressure on the government of country A to change in some fundamental way (in this case, Taiwan liberalized politically, ending 4 decades of martial law and no opposition parties). The people leaving are usually exiles who intend to go back to country A once the changes are made, and that is true in this case as well. But the key issue I am examining is: How do these people even get to the point of organizing sufficiently to create a lobby that successfully applies pressure to American leaders? More precisely, why do some groups succeed (Jewish Americans, Cuban Americans, Taiwanese Americans) while others fail? Are there lessons that American-born citizens can learn from this process?

After counting all the pages of 28 dissertations (19 of which are relevant to my topic, the others are written by people I know, like my adviser, and thus serve as models for my dissertation, or written by famous authors) I have calculated that I have 7,893 pages to read. if I read 50 pages per day, I will be finished by January, giving me enough time to use the information to structure my research. So, I am looking at a much smoother path to completion and submission by April 30. That should excite me but, as I have been telling my mother and other people recently, this actually scares me a great deal. First, I am confronted with the probability that no one will read my dissertation unless I publish it as books and journal articles, and, even if I do that, I will never reach the thousands, or millions of people, that I want to reach. Second, I am confronted with the lack of connection between my dissertation topic and any career moves I make. If I had gone to law school, medical school, or business school I know that there would be a direct connection between what I studied and what I will do in my career. That connection seems to be absent in academia. I have never once heard a professor talk about his or her dissertation topic, and I have never seen a CV for a professor that showed a connection between dissertation topic and their job 10, 20, or 30 years later. I want a connection, and I know that will not happen. Finally, and most dreadfully, the structure of academia turns me off. What I want most in a career is to work on creative, collaborative teams, ideally in the same office, or at least in the same general location. The teams should also, ideally, consist of people who understand me as well as I understand them. But academia consists of lone academics who are specialists in their field. I don't want to be a specialist. I want to be on a team that specializes. Teams exist in the sciences, in law firms, in corporations, in sports, and in the military, but not in the social sciences or the humanities. As a result of these three problems, I am leaning more toward creating my own organizations, structured around important causes, using the knowledge I gather from the dissertation writing process, and developing teams that I work with daily.

Countdown: 294 days until submission

Today I received my first fellowship check from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. The next check will arrive after Jan. 1, 2010. The deadline for submitting my dissertation to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is April 30, 2010. Graduation day is May 27, 2010. I will receive more fellowship money from the AGEP (Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) Program in September. I am thus contractually obligated to complete my disseration by April 30. In addition, Spring 2010 is the 4th semester after passing my 2nd exam (proposal phase), which is the limit for the Graduate Center. In short, I absolutely have to submit my dissertation by April 30.

That gives me 294 days to go through the required steps. I will be staying at home, taking care of my 3-year-old daughter and my infant son during that time. My daughter will be going to summer school and then regular school during the Fall Semester. This will give me "lots" of time to write the dissertation. That seems like a lot of time, but with two kids and a house to manage, a day goes by in a flash. A week seems more like a day. This means that I have to have a way to keep track of time, meaning working without letting too much time pass. This is the reason I started this blog. Without it, I will have a much more difficult time completing my dissertation by April 30, 2010.

For this inaugural post, I will describe the steps I intend to take daily toward completion of my dissertation. I will write three paragraphs, as I am in this post. I will include the activities I am engaging (the books, dissertations, papers, web sites, interviews) to complete the disseration. I will write about one significant step per day. I will write about the subject matter itself: The formation of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs as the grassroots lobby of the Taiwan Independence Movement from 1977 to 1987, and the corresponding changes on Congressional policy toward the Republic of China on Taiwan. Finally, I will share my thoughts on the nature of the All-But-Dissertation Phase that every graduate student goes through to complete the dissertation.