The Academic 10 Year Challenge

Thanks to Josh Kertzer, I was inspired to wonder how much has changed in ten years.  He tweeted:

10 years ago, my dissertation looked like this: pic.twitter.com/sc8arAaypi

— Josh Kertzer (@jkertzer) January 26, 2019

For him, ten years ago takes him back to his dissertation.  For me?  Well, I was still at McGill, still an Associate Professor (sigh), still a Canadian Research Chair, and still having pubs on the international relations of ethnic conflict (see old cv here and most recent one here):


No pubs on alliances or civil-military relations yet.  There was no evidence of Canadian defence anything.  On the bright side, no mention of a grant for diaspora research that, well, didn't produce much in the way of results. The research in progress lists as many now dead projects as those that were quite productive:


I was still doing talks on the previous book, which featured xenophobia before it became hip, although I started giving talks on the caveats/alliances/comparative civ-mil project that became my destiny for the next decade.  The co-authors have changed a bit, reflecting the new research agendas.

The list of service stuff got more extensive, including some testimony in Canada and yes, much more reviewing.  In the old CV, I didn't list the PhD students I had supervised, perhaps because only three had completed by Feb of 2009.  Now, I list all of those who have finished or who are past their dissertation proposal.

Oh and one more difference: no twitter address and no blog address.  Those things happened a few months later--spring and summer of 2009.  Pretty sure my reputation, whatever it is now, has a key piece tied to social media presence/activity, and that simply didn't exist ten years ago. 

To be clear, while I liked my career and where it stood (mostly) ten years ago, I am much happier and satisfied where I am now.  I, of course, still suffer from academic guilt--that I could have been more productive, and rejection still is inherent in the enterprise.  Yet, I know that I have been lucky, which is why this is where I usually put Joe Walsh. 

The only real question left is whether this #Academic10YearChallenge is also an effort by facebook  to improve its algorithms.