Research and the Public: The Perils of Public Engagement

Abstract

The email denouncing me as an apologist for genocide came at a particularly bad moment. Saturday morning, so my guard was down. Shouldn’t I be watching cartoons with the kids and relaxing after a massive breakfast? Serves me right for checking work email on a weekend morning (although that is a different essay). The email arrived while I was still in the glow of what I felt was the greatest experience of my professional life, the opening of an exhibition that I had co-curated with my friend and colleague Tom Herron (English, East Carolina University) at the Folger Shakespeare Library (Nobility and Newcomers in Renaissance Ireland, which ran January through May 2013). The opening was a packed, gala event, presided over by the Irish ambassador and the director of the Folger, and attended by family, friends, colleagues, and hundreds of others. Tom and I gave opening addresses, welcomed guests, and reveled in an evening of excitement, support, hors d’oeuvres, and free booze. Seemingly, a fine time was had by all—certainly by my younger son Gavin, ten at the time, who ate his body weight in finger food—and compliments and kudos flowed as freely as the wine. And seemingly with the same effect, for on the following Saturday I was, as they say, fat and happy: relaxed, tired, and self-satisfied in the wake of what seemed a universally positive experience.