Oh man, I really didn’t want to write about Angelina Jolie Pitt  (AJP) and her damn LSE appointment. When I heard the news it just made me feel tired. But there has been an interesting/frustrating  debate emerging and I just can’t keep my yap shut- even on maternity leave. In his post on the topic, Dan Drezner asks us to all calm the F down; he assures us that policy schools have always been opportunistic and brought in pretty unqualified but interesting folks to teach (well, he sort of says that). The Aidnography post, Why you should be critical of Professor Angelina Jolie Pitt’s LSE gig does a great job of putting the appointment into the broader context of hollywood obsession with poverty/global race relations/the corporate university. Just today, Laura Shepherd brings much more nuance to the debate in her Disorder of Things post. She acknowledges a loooong list of reasons we might hate the idea of Jolie Pitt as Professor, but argues that ultimately its not fair to focus on her beauty/celebrity and bypass her experience and cred.
I haven’t actually read many critiques that focus on AJP’s beauty or celebrity- or at least not exclusively. For me, the frustrating thing has been the undue focus on whether AJP is sincere/dedicated enough. Those that support AJP argue that her long-standing dedication and commitment is currency for expertise, while those who oppose AJP try to undercut her ‘true’ dedication, arguing that her likely narcissistic motivations make her unqualified to teach gender and war. The arguments boil down to: ‘she’s sooo amazing and how could anyone do such difficult and important work and not have some expertise to offer’ VERSUS ‘these roles satisfy her own ego/image and she probably doesn’t even recycle.’ Â To be honest, I could give a flying F about AJP’s dedication. Donald Trump believes he is dedicated to securing America; clearly, dedication does not equal expertise. So let’s move on to experience.
Shepherd reminds readers that AJP has been special envoy and ambassador and been on 50+ field trips. I’m sure there is a whole host of other honors, roles, trips, and experiences AJP has had; however, offering these details as evidence that she deserves more credit and that she is, indeed, some form of expert is an epic stretch.  Here are 3 reasons why we cannot read AJP’s cv as relevant Professorial experience and 1 argument about why, ultimately, the ‘real’ argument is about whether enlightenment, neocolonial, patronising awareness raising looks better when done by AJP, Bono, or Trump.Â
Sooo experience. First, special envoy and ambassador posts have often been given to high profile, rich, privileged people- not because they are experts, but because they are high profile, rich, privileged people. These posts don’t necessarily say much about her expertise, but they say a lot about her privilege and the way that institutions have tried to leverage/reproduce this privilege. Second, let’s get serious about her field trips. I’m not going to get into some debate about how long/tough/dedicated trips need to be in order to be ‘legit’- but I feel quite confident that her short trips taken in between making movies and attending awards shows are not a vehicle to expertise. These trips might make her an expert on 1) short trips to places that are generally difficult to travel to 2) listening to very difficult stories 3) photo opportunities (I know that last one will make AJP supporters roll their eyes, but I’m ok with that). I’m not saying visiting refugee camps isn’t difficult, or that these experiences didn’t move AJP- but I’m saying lots of drop-in publicity tours/awareness raising tours does not an expert make.
Third, even if we take her travel and roles as legitimate qualifications for lecturing on war, I’m not sure how her experience or roles make her a gender expert. If this is the bar for ‘ gender expert’ then I would assume Bono could also teach about gender and war, since both have seemed to engage and push gender issues with about the same amount of rigour. Finally, for me, the real issue isn’t if she is ‘legit,’ an expert, has enough experience, is dedicated, is ‘just’ a celebrity, or is beautiful. The real question is whether having white, western woman ‘raise awareness’ about the ‘plight’ of the ‘other’ is ever anything but neo-colonial, patronising and ego satisfying. While attending another top university (some might say, THE top university) I took a class from a very rich female former ambassador and, I can tell you with 100% certainty, it was all kinda colors of white-saviour/let’s hear about my amazing contributions to the world/enlightenment logic on steroids. Having this kind of ‘knowledge’ poured into some of the ‘top’ minds reproduces elitism and, ultimately, provides the following take home message: rich people should try to help poor people (or at least think about them) once in a while (mostly because it feels good)- all the while ignoring structural hierarchies/forms of oppression/global systems of exploitation.
This is a great critique, Megan. It really pushed me to think more about the whole experience/expert thread of argument in my own post, and here’s what I came up with: ‘she is, indeed, some form of expert’ in *some* things – things that are going to be highly relevant to students of Women, Peace and Security. I absolutely agree that Jolie Pitt’s considerable privilege of all different kinds got her access to the world of humanitarian work that is closed to others. But I have to believe that if she’s believed to be a credible representative by UNHCR she has *some* knowledge of the issues. Jolie Pitt gave evidence to the Security Council during an Open Debate on the deteriorating situation in Syria in 2015, alongside Guterres (https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2015/4/553a69459/unhcrs-guterres-jolie-pitt-address-un-security-council-syria.html). So, minimally, she has expertise/experience in presenting evidence to the SC, and in being a UN envoy and other UNHCR stuff – the layout of the camps she’s visited, logistics and so on (not that I ever get to teach WPS or even gender politics, but if I did, I surely couldn’t talk with the same degree of authority about these things). These are interesting and valuable experiences to share. So I guess much rests on what we assume she is going to be asked to teach.
Relatedly, I am assuming that she is not going to be asked to work with the students on the CRSV, white privilege, or institutional literature, which goes to your question of rigour. I agree completely it’s crucial to be attentive to ‘structural hierarchies/forms of oppression/global systems of exploitation’ (and argued the same in my original post). And I suspect that actually the students are likely to have a better handle on this stuff, to be honest, because when they’re not being taught by Jolie Pitt, Hague, Rees, and Connors, they’re in the hands of truly excellent feminist instructors. So maybe they will all learn from the encounters in turn. If in the course of doing the gig, Jolie Pitt et al. (Hague in particularly, because I’m sick to death of him getting off the hook here) are given cause to reflect again on critiques about the embodiment of privilege, and their participation in the white saviour industrial complex (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/), and how they might know some things but perhaps not others, then maybe that is actually a good thing too.
I hear what you are saying and I think our thinking overlaps when it comes to our frustration with lazy critiques of the appointment but I think the effort it takes to justify/explain/search for evidence of experience is a bit sad for students. From my perspective, practitioner scholars should have ‘experience OF’ something (ie working in DC, military missions, consulting etc) not just ‘experience IN’ (which seems to be measured in very generous terms here). What is AJP’s experience of war, gender, security? How could her brief visits possibly provide her with an ‘experience of’ war that would lend itself to meaningful teaching moments? Those are just questions I can’t seem to answer.
Your blog is my article in a nutshell https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dina_Haynes/publication/256058521_The_Celebritization_of_Human_Trafficking/links/542166f90cf2ce3a91b71be9.pdf
Thank you for this clear and concise article that reflect my very disorganized thoughts on this subject. This is exactly how I feel about AJP being appointed. Fundamentally it is not about her and her accomplishments (she has done a good job in some instances and it is not about hating her I quite like AJP) it is about the message it sends. Being a student in International Development at the LSE we are constantly being told that we should not promote a western centric vision of the world and development, that we should capitalize and integrate local individuals and their perspectives (whether it is done directly indirectly consciously or unconsciously) yet they hire AJP… it seems very contradictory and for publicity, altogether quite disappointing from an institution that is so renowned.
Thanks- I’m really interested to hear about students’ reaction to all this!
1/2 Another missive from maternity leave, inspired by Megan’s post, but responding more generally to lots of what’s been flying about in the last few days in discussion of AJP’s appointment. While I’m very sympathetic to many of the critiques raised about systematic privilege and oppression, WSC and so on, it strikes me that the target is wrong, and perniciously so. And some of the arguments which are gaining most traction raise serious questions about our own (inflated) ideas about what we do as academics. On the subject of the target – AJP neither invented the post of Professor in Practice, nor is she responsible for celebrity humanitarianism. In fact, her engagement with political issues is enormously more sustained and serious than any other celeb I’m aware of. But comparing her to other celebs is part of the problem. Her CV – no doubt built on privilege, but that’s not unusual, celeb or not – is more impressive than many non-celebs in this field. Yet gallons of ink have been spilled this week trying to establish precisely what might qualify her as having practical expertise in the subject of Women, Peace and Security. I have seen precisely nothing about the expertise of the other three appointees (all of whom are white, incidentally), nor have I ever seen a sustained discussion of the credentials of any other Prof in Practice, appointed anywhere. Something specific has touched a collective nerve about this appointment, and as it’s patently not to do with AJP’s actual expertise vis-a-vis other Profs in Practice (Laura has shown why: https://thedisorderofthings.co… then it seems like it must be to do with AJP herself. As a (successful, privileged, famous, attractive) woman it is assumed – in the face of evidence – that she can’t have the necessary expertise to do this job. If we’re going to kick off about professors in practice, vs AJP personally, then the target should be the universities who appoint these people, and the students who are interested to hear from them, not the appointees themselves. The systematic campaign to undermine the achievements of this particular woman strikes me as misogynistic, bullying and beneath us. [posted in 2 parts as initial post triggered spam filter]
2/2 Which is not, of course, to say that questions shouldn’t be raised on what is taught to students and how. But to fetishise ‘our’ expertise versus ‘theirs’ (policy practitioners, famous or otherwise) is a dangerous business. Policy practitioners may not have read as many books as academics have, and may not spend as much time as we would like to reflecting and analysing rather than ‘doing’ (though, given the amount of admin we now ‘do’, the difference in time spent living the life of the mind might be smaller than we imagine), but this does not mean that academics are necessarily better teachers. The appointments at the WPS Centre are primarily about teaching and imparting knowledge – ‘delivering guest lectures to students, participating in expert workshops and public events’ – and to claim that one or more of these people don’t have the expertise to teach rather assumes that we do. Yet I can’t be alone as an academic in teaching all kinds of things I’m neither an academic- nor a practical expert in – many of the topics on core courses being the obvious example. I have read stuff and thought about it, and I can facilitate discussions between students, but my expertise could not stand up to the kind of scrutiny levelled at AJP. I understand that the title ‘Professor’ is one that many of us aspire to, and it’s uncomfortable when it looks like it’s been given away cheaply to people who haven’t trained to be academics (https://aidnography.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/why-you-should-be-critical-of-professor-angelina-jolie-lse.html) but making grand statements about what we offer in terms of expertise when teaching is mistaken. Being an academic doesn’t automatically make you a good teacher, nor does it give you expertise in anything other than the very narrow range of topics we each research consistently (and then only a particular kind of expertise). No-one is seriously going to mistake Professors in Practice for academic Profs, or those who have attained the title through an academic route, so we can cut the gatekeeping and focus on debating the kinds of knowledge that we impart to students both through the kinds of people universities appoint (back to the Profs in Practice debate – and an analysis of the characteristics of this group in terms of gender, ethnicity, class etc vs academics vs the general population would be, I imagine, pretty enlightening) and through the kinds of courses that we offer. And, for all its shady neoliberalism, I can’t help but be really pleased that the LSE is offering a full MSc in Women, Peace and Security – not a ‘gender’ week on a security course, or a ‘gender’ course in a programme that otherwise ignores the subject – that will be taught for the most part by some of the leading academics in the field, and that this course is getting the volume of media attention usually reserved only for discussing what Beyoncé wore to the latest awards ceremony…
Thanks for the comments- I still go back to my comments to Laura above. If we are basing the legitimacy of this appointment on the fact that it is a ‘Professor in Practice’ role, it still warrants asking: what is AJP’s experience of gender and war and what experience will she convey to students? Is that the best we can hope for students?
I have a post in progress on this but may just join the conversation here, but I think people are far too dismissive of these field visits, study tours, whatever we want to call them. If you have done anything like them, such as a Council on Foreign Relations trip (as I have), they can be intense learning experiences. If she’s done fifty of them to remote places to talk to refugees, service delivers, NGOs, and governments, then I would be shocked if she hadn’t learned a great deal about the subject matter, in ways that on some level give her more direct exposure to the problems than academics do. She’s gone to Syria on multiple occasions, which I think can be easily dismissed as war tourism, but I would want to read more about the length of her visits and the agenda of them. If it is all photo-op to show her in the field, that’s one thing, but if she’s taking the time in each instance to get briefings from a variety of actors about the facts on the ground, I wouldn’t dismiss her expertise out of hand.
The debate is raised ––– already a plus. Getting real sometimes involves exposure to the false, or, superficial. If students can’t ferret out the truth, as Megan did with her “prof” then who is to blame? Are we gonna disclaim celebrity activism altogether? Does it harm?