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.