[mch2021-orga] CfP & PhDs ; -) (was: Call for Comments on Call for Papers)

[Patrice Riemens]

Hi all,

Nice to see the event taking shape & many smart comments on the smart 
CfP proposal!

My 2c (or as former - and now dead - Dutch PM would have it: "Two Things 
...": (I'll keep to that, he never did ;-)

1) Call for Papers vs Call for Participation? Merge the two! 'Call for 
Papers and/or Participation' ('CfPP'?)

2) "BTW, some people are exploring the possibilities of very 
academically
oriented village/track with a separate programme and budget, aimed at
PhD students, but of course accessible to anyone at the camp. That one
would have its own call for papers."



I don't think that this is a good idea - at all.

Nowadays academia has mostly turned into an inward-looking closed shop 
which some critics have called 'a sausage factory', an appropriate 
moniker as it shuns being really looked into by outsiders. Over the 
course of years it has also let itself being subjugated by a 
productivist, neo-liberal ideology, putting output numbers above quality 
content, and running down fundamental research to the point that a 
friend of mine was calling his university a KFZ, a Knowledge-Free-Zone.

Encouraging PhD students and assorted academic researchers run their own 
'village' - or ghetto - does not appear to me to be a very 'smart' move 
in these circumstances. On the contrary, let the academics run wild in 
the MCH camp and discover that there is everything they believe an 
established research/higher education institution is uniquely about 
happens there too, and often to a beter outcome.

Ciao Ciao, stay strong,
p+2D!